


Kissing Carrion

by innie



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-30 16:36:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 44,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12112806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie
Summary: Harry is the most unreliable narrator in the world, especially when the story keeps taking him by surprise.





	Kissing Carrion

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Kate_Lear](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Lear/pseuds/Kate_Lear) for the beta and Britpick! (Doing this massive favor for me could not have come at a worse time for her, and she still did it with cheer - she's a true friend.)
> 
> Absolutely no spoilers for the second movie. Will almost definitely not be compliant with the canon of the second movie.
> 
> Allusions are explained in the end notes.

Harry's first thought when he wakes is that he must be a hell of a fellow. No-one unworthy, surely, would have a slim, strong hand clasped around his own; no-one undeserving would have another's delicate finger sweeping tenderly, ceaselessly over the pulse-point in his wrist. 

He hums a little in the back of his throat, smelling the familiar, not-quite-pleasant air of the infirmary, and makes the herculean effort to open his eyes. Halfway through the process, he feels something else, another touch, one that reminds him just who he is. That's Owen's firm hand on his foot, that swift double-tap that both reassures him he has feeling in all his limbs and tells him silently that his state is beyond dire and well into truly fucked.

But Owen is _here_. Whoever else is sitting patiently, responsively – that hand had clutched his a little more tightly at his hum – at his bedside, his oldest friend is at the foot of the bed and waiting to be seen. Harry finally manages to open his eyes, and Owen looks all wrong.

Well, he looks curiously flat, angled somehow. Owen stays still and straight and silent, letting him assess. It hits Harry like an open-handed slap to the throat: he has no depth perception. His left hand comes up to feel what's blocking his left eye, but that's the hand that's being held, and he hears a gasp, hears it even over the dull but insistent ringing in his ears, and feels the warm weight of his unseen visitor drape across his shoulder, pulled by the movement of their joined hands. 

It's Eggsy, looking up at him like he's a revelation, but Harry needs to know what's diminishing him before he can even begin to think of what he wants, so he shakes Eggsy's warm clasp free – he sees the boy's radiant look dim – and feels gingerly at his face. Instead of the reassurance of gauze, his questing fingertips encounter the unassailable permanence of an eyepatch. They dip underneath, still searching, still needing to know, and Eggsy's choking breath breaks the silence.

He must look like all the paintings of Doubting Thomas – Caravaggio's depiction of a thick-fingered Thomas curiously prying at a pale and drawn Jesus is particularly gruesome, therefore realistic, therefore his favourite – and the thought makes him nod at Owen, still standing patiently, with his hands around his Merlin tablet. "Hello, Heretic," Owen says, and Eggsy, his face still against Harry's chest, lets one sob escape his wet red mouth as Harry finds the stitch holding his empty eyelids together.

"Owen," Harry says, or tries to say, but his larynx will not cooperate though his lips shape the syllables. 

Eggsy's fingertips scrabble at his throat, a tickling and skittery sensation as if the boy were trying to pull his voice out, then catch his hand again. "Harry, please," he says. "You been out for weeks, what d'you need?"

"Eggsy, lad, sit back, take your weight off him. He needs answers." Owen says it calmly enough to sound fond rather than chiding, and Eggsy is sufficiently off-balance to respond to that with an honest, if shaky, smile over his shoulder for their Merlin. Harry catches the last of it and lets his eye linger while he drinks down the sound of utter thankfulness threading through Owen's voice. "You know us." Owen waits for Harry's nod before continuing, "You lost the eye." Again he waits for acknowledgment. "And some hair, a pound of flesh. But not your lovely mind. You're a lucky beggar, Heretic."

How Owen can know that there's no brain damage Harry is not sure, but he knows that the words would not have been spoken were Owen less than certain. Even if his voice doesn't work, his face still moves as he dictates, so he blinks – winks, rather, being monocular, and he does hope he looks deliciously rakish – his thanks to his stalwart friend and smiles at Eggsy, who smiles tremulously back and kisses the back of his hand. The boy's mouth is so lushly incarnadine Harry's surprised it doesn't leave a mark.

*

"'Twasn't the first time you'd woke up," Merlin says, endlessly tapping away at his blasted tablet. "Textbook patient, really; slow gradual steps." He pauses, a pleased rumble coming from his chest as his fingers momentarily still. "Made a very nice change for the nurses."

"I'd forgotten your propensity to mock the infirm," Harry says from the depths of his pillow. Pillows, rather, as Eggsy's extravagance has led to a mountainous mound, none of it medically necessary or even useful, but strangely tolerated by the nursing staff. Harry suspects that at least two of them harbour a specific tenderness for the boy. "How many times did I wake?" Harry asks, reverting to the new information rather than defending himself. Slipping, he is slipping; coming up from a coma is practically old hat for him, and he should have remembered the wakening process feels far less dreamy and picture-perfect. He wonders how badly he scared Owen, if the Merlin-mask had slipped.

"Three times that I saw, couldn't speak any time. Couldn't do much more than blink the first time, looked at me with some recognition the second." Owen says it all casually, as if he'd never so much as entertained the thought that his best friend might be inertly recumbent for the rest of his days. Harry would find it hard to believe that anyone else was allowed to watch over his bed if he did not know how many demands there are on Owen's time. He's back to his Merlin voice soon enough. "Ah, duty calls. I should be back soon, with a treat if you're still up."

"Must I sit up and beg like a pup?" he asks, wondering at the odd juxtaposition of the terms duty and treat. 

"Mr. Pickle really ought to have trained you better," Owen says, steady fingers double-tapping Harry's ankle as he walks out with a smile on his face, and Harry has missed him so much.

*

"Ready?" Owen asks when he strolls back in, less than an hour later. "Oh, who gave you that?" he says with a gravely disappointed sigh, as if Harry is holding something less anodyne than the plainest tie Kingsman makes for civilians; Harry had not wanted to deal with the reinforced material or concealed garrotting-wire of his Galahad ties when he was simply testing his dexterity by tying various knots and checking their symmetry.

"A nurse." If he is vague because he realises he knows none of their names, that will be his own secret; Owen is free to think he is skirting specificity so none will get in trouble. He widens his eyes – his _eye_ , he has to acclimate to having just the one – and looks up at Owen. "Please may I have my treat?"

"Cease and desist," Owen says, not troubling to hide his fondness; he never has, though their clubbing together had not gained either of them wider popularity at school or university. "I sincerely hope whoever advised you that a dimple in a Windsor knot would complement the dimple in your chin has paid amply for their sins. Now budge up."

It hurts more to move than he's willing to let on, and the ringing in his ears has lessened only slightly. Still, his life's chosen work has involved manipulating his body with ease and grace, and he flatters himself that his pain is imperceptible to others. He grits his teeth and shuffles, ungainly in his pyjamas and dressing-gown, trapped in the linens of his infirmary bed.

"Heretic, you bloody fool," Owen says brusquely, shoving his tablet at him. Harry shakes the crumpled tie out of his knotted fist, takes the tablet pressing into his belly, and accepts Owen's strong hands on his hips, positioning him comfortably. "Is your head up to this?"

Harry does not know, is tired of not knowing, so he makes a deliberately regal gesture with his hand, a king beckoning his vassal to get on with things. Owen gives his thigh a good pinch, startling a laugh out of him, and steals the tablet back. "After this you're to go right back to sleep, mind. I'm bloody petrified of your nurses."

Owen presses play and Harry hears a man's voice, American, say _Hit it!_ There are some rhythmic shouts – a man's energised cheer and a woman's higher yelp, repeated with a distinctly catchy beat behind them – that he tunes out as he sees Eggsy and Roxanne on the screen, grinning at the camera. They're both gyrating, limbs loose and lovely with youth, lighting up the dim corner of the shop where the lining fabrics were kept. Eggsy's hair is tucked beneath one of his dreadful caps, the pale underside of the brim making him look pinker than ever, and Roxanne's flows loose around her shoulders. They could be siblings, both alive with energy, both dressed down in the thin shirts in which they train. There's the slimmest sliver of light between them.

Roxanne begins mouthing along to the woman's voice: _It takes two to make a thing go right, it takes two to make it out of sight._ Harry follows along because she holds up a sign with the words on it while Eggsy dances around her, lifting smaller cards with various letters on them in time with the beat: _D – A – I – S – Y_. He flips the last letter down when it's his turn to pretend to sing, and the words are coming too quickly for Harry to make sense of them all, with both Roxanne and Eggsy still dancing like uncoordinated children. Once he catches the words because of their choreography; when Eggsy assures his sister that _ladies love me_ , Roxanne kisses the corner of his mouth and fans herself coyly, and on _girls adore me_ Eggsy reaches for the camera with both hands like it's Daisy he sees there instead and he's pinching her cheeks. His part is over in a few more lines, and then he's whirling around Roxanne as she takes up the chorus again. Both of them keep grinning like lunatics, and their energy only increases, Eggsy bouncing as if he has an invisible pogo stick. He steps back up, crowding the camera for the last few lines, ending on _you don't like it, so what, I don't care_ with a cheeky defiance that seems all too familiar to Harry. The music cuts out and Eggsy, flushed and laughing, gathers Roxanne up in his arms and calls out, "Ta, guv. Wanted to give Dais somethin' she can see whenever."

Harry wants to ask Owen just how many missions Eggsy has been sent on if his sister needs some constant reminder of his face, but Owen's voice comes through the recording then: "Any other message?" Harry goes cold at the implications of that question, then immediately doubts himself when the happiness on Eggsy's face stays put.

"Daisyluv, big bruv loves ya! Auntie Rox too!" Eggsy's taken a step toward the camera, dragging Roxanne along, and they are sweaty and panting, the pair of them temptingly dewy, and if Harry didn't know all about the damage that Julian Robbins wreaked, he'd wonder how Merlin kept his hands off the newest Kingsmen. "An' Uncle Owen was dancin' too, don't let him pretend any different, petal." Harry can hear Owen's amused snort as Eggsy laughs and blows a kiss to the camera. "Eggsy out!"

The video cuts to black, and Harry, squinting, can make out the timer in the corner. Less than ninety seconds for all of those revelations. He doesn't let himself consider how dangerous Eggsy's missions must have been if the boy wanted to make a memorial video for the sake of his sister, a child who cannot be much more than two years old unless he is much mistaken. He doesn't want to think about the ease with which Eggsy and Roxanne touched each other, how the girl was "Auntie Rox" and a willing participant in the project, setting any pride she might have aside to dance like a fool. 

All Harry says is, "Owen?" meaning _He knows your name?_ He is used to Owen's name being his own secret knowledge, even among the knights of old; he's the only one who's known Owen since they were spotty boy-sopranos running around Winchester on coltish legs. Owen's sharing that name is hard and fast proof of some bond, some feeling that ties him and Eggsy together strongly enough that Roxanne's mere proximity was enough to let her in too. Harry wants to watch the video again, to look for all of the glances Eggsy gave the camera – or the cameraman.

Owen covers Harry's hand with his, does a soft version of his double-tap, and says, "There's much you've missed."

*

Merlin's imperious command to sleep had been softened by a _please, Heretic_ from Owen, but Harry is awake still. He is lying in his infirmary bed, rigged up to monitors and machines, and he has just managed to keep his mind from wandering to the question of where Owen's evident affection for Eggsy begins and ends; the price for that is that he is thinking about Eggsy and Roxanne. Their inconvenient closeness had begun almost from the moment they'd met, though Harry had failed to register the danger until hours later, playing the footage from the water test on his home terminal out of what he would only term idle curiosity or perhaps a need for vindication, to see that his candidate could last as long as anyone else's. Arthur would have made sure to gloat immediately if Eggsy, troubled son of a troublesome candidate, had failed the very first test.

He'd been an idiot – that voice in his head sounded remarkably like Owen's – in the few short hours he'd had with Eggsy. First necking his Guinness like he was parched, as the boy's pint, tellingly, stayed nearly untouched; then turning his takedown of the goons in the pub into a sort of mating dance, only to send the boy off to be threatened by an armed and drunken lout; and finally posing with another belt of whisky when Eggsy at last set foot in the shop. A pickled liver was hardly likely to make him seem trustworthy to a boy plagued by a stepfather who was in all probability only marginally more dangerous when he was in his cups. 

Still, Eggsy had nowhere else to go – Harry had almost engineered such an outcome with his stunt in the pub – and was clearly desperately alone. Easy pickings for Roxanne's polished, professional warmth, Harry judged when he watched the footage of Eggsy's introduction to the other Lancelot candidates. Roxanne's approach betrayed NLP training, and Harry recalled that Percival had some long-standing connection with his candidate, though not a blood tie.

Eggsy had looked to her to judge how to stand, how to react. Harry cursed himself for a fool for not explaining any of the candidacy's demands, though he could see that Merlin's authoritative speech and encouraging tone settled something inside the boy, who'd after all done brilliantly in his truncated Marines training, earning top marks from his instructors. Roxanne's diplomacy meant that Eggsy chose the bed next to hers and even tried a tentative joke with her and Amelia before settling down. Harry watched as Eggsy lay in his bed, one arm bent to tuck that hand under his head – Lee had slept just the same in his candidate's bed, though he'd always left more space on one side of the bed as if he couldn't get used to not having his wife's warmth beside him – only to bolt upright when his mattress started to float.

Eggsy clearly couldn't parse the other candidates' talk of loo snorkels and showerheads, and Harry laughed a little at the boy's outright bewilderment that no one thought to try the damn door – the _fucking_ door, he called it; Eggsy did always have the profane _mot juste_ to hand – only to have his breath catch in his throat at the sight of Eggsy, body cutting like a knife through the water, swimming away from the door toward the two-way mirror. Eggsy's gaze did not stray to either Amelia, overacting in the far corner, or Roxanne, directly in front of him, her floating hair swirling like a mermaid's. He simply set his jaw grimly and began beating his way out with one granite fist. The glass had cracked by his third punch, spider-webbed by the fourth, and shattered completely by the fifth.

Harry pressed pause, considering this unexpected solution. Eggsy's actions had hardly been selfless or disinterested, but he had managed to rescue everyone in the room in one swift go; sixty-one seconds elapsed between the water's cutting off his question about the door and his first punch at the mirror. What had the rest of the candidates done in that time but secure personal supplies of oxygen? Were they simply going to wait, either to see if treading water for an entire night was their first test of endurance or to prepare in case Merlin released something nasty into the water? In Harry's own year, he remembered, the water level and temperature had kept fluctuating wildly thanks to temporary whirlpools, disorientating the lot of them constantly, and he had had to stay alert and in motion for eight hours. Two of the other contenders for Galahad had needed resuscitation at that point, and those who had passed the first test had been given siren suits and directed to navigate the obstacle course.

Eggsy had rather sped things up. Merlin, unflustered as ever, had coped well with the change in schedule, sorting out enough spare beds and pyjamas to accommodate the young ones; Eggsy and Roxanne had stayed paired together, and Harry switched over to the feed inside their small, bare room in the middle of the makeshift dormitory row. The two of them stripped easily out of their wet and clinging clothes and into the thicker, larger pyjamas left on their twin beds. Roxanne's dry-eyed practicality emerged as she shook excess moisture from her discarded clothes, laid the garments flat on the floor, and wrung out her hair. Eggsy, Harry could see, was shivering yet, squeezing his wet pyjamas and draping them over the flimsy aluminium footboard of his bed. 

All three of them seemed to come to the realisation simultaneously that there were no blankets or towels to be found. Harry watched, strangely transfixed, as Roxanne chewed her lip and met Eggsy's eyes. "Turn off the light on your way," she said, and Eggsy was up before the command was complete, plunging the room into darkness and diving into her bed so that they could share what little body heat they could generate. Harry told himself he did not want to see any more, to know if they stripped again to press flesh to flesh, but kept the feed running long enough to hear Eggsy's shaken, "Sweet dreams, Roxy," and her answering exhale against his chest, pressed up close in a narrow little bed that under the ghastly fluorescent lights had looked no bigger than the last sliver of soap.

*

Eggsy, now, is leaning over his wide, adjustable infirmary bed, smiling down at him. He is entirely beautiful and completely unaware, focused as he is on assessing Harry.

Harry wants very badly to stretch his body until he feels every taut muscle uncoil luxuriously and then haul Eggsy down on top of him with an insistent arm around his waist. The other can loop around the boy's nape, the better to bring that firm mouth close enough that he can reach up and bite it.

He also wants, with equal intensity, to be able to pull the last words he spoke to Eggsy – spat at Eggsy – back into his poisonous mouth and swallow them down. There had been so much riding on Eggsy's candidacy, on all of the tests, and for the boy to have soared over every hurdle only to stumble on the lowest was a bitter blow. He had flayed Eggsy, watched as a terrible hurt flashed across Eggsy's face when the knowledge that his father had got through the dog test made Lee sink in his estimation, and then stopped his ears when Eggsy began apologising. Eggsy had been the bigger man then, unwilling to make a mess without at least attempting to scrub it away, but Harry had rubbed his nose in it. He still doesn't know if Eggsy is drawing a curtain over the whole ugly incident or if Eggsy is merely biding his time. It must be the former, because Eggsy is not the type to make anyone beg for his forgiveness.

Eggsy is the type to be thoughtful and bring unexpected perspectives to even straightforward matters. Harry can smell the sharp, comforting fragrance of the crayons Eggsy is holding in front of his face, all variants of brown, all worn down at least halfway. Merlin walks in then, flanked by Roxanne, and Harry's spine cannot decide if it should relax or tense up. 

His body clenches painfully when Eggsy grins and reaches out for her in the same easy movement as he turns away from Harry. "Welcome back, Roxypet," he says, his voice glad and bright, and she catches and returns that radiance. Harry would call their kiss marital but not perfunctory – it is easy, steady, sweet, and natural. He cannot fathom how she has won Eggsy so masterfully; this is the girl whom Eggsy had, against all competitive instincts, coaxed into passing the jump test, who had only survived that test because Eggsy had rocked his hips up to get his unsupported legs round her and brace her for their precipitous fall. Harry has watched the footage more than once, has watched all of it more than once, feeling feverish. "You're just in time to back me up here," Eggsy announces, shooting a smile over at Owen, once again holding the crayons up.

"Daisy allowed you to remove her crayons from your house?" Owen asks incredulously. She must be a particularly difficult toddler to require that tone of voice, Harry concludes; he only hopes she has not been let loose on the walls of his little house with her blasted crayons.

"She loves her big bruv. 'Sides, I promised her we'd bring 'em back tonight."

"I should introduce myself," Roxanne says, self-consciously well-brought-up child that she is, holding out a hand like she is unaware of any reason Harry's depth perception might be compromised and that negotiating a handshake might be beyond his current abilities. "Lancelot." So she had bested Eggsy for the title. Is Eggsy working under Merlin, then? "Roxanne Morton. It is a pleasure to meet you, Galahad."

He has no choice but to stick his hand out gracelessly; Roxanne is casually generous in the manner of odious victors everywhere and presses her palm to his smoothly, precluding any half-blind fumbling. "Ah, yes, the first representative of Kingsman's distaff side. Charmed." He does not offer his name or any sincerity, but the words sound gracious enough to get by. He is burning with the ferocity of his antipathy toward this girl. "Please, assist Eggsy in his endeavour to match my iris to something mass-produced in a Crayola factory."

"Sepia's too light, and much as I want to say Fuzzy Wuzzy is the one, I think Dark Venetian Red's the closest," Eggsy proclaims, Roxanne nodding as her gaze keeps cutting between the crayons and Harry's intact eye.

"Pointless, Heretic," Owen says, rather gleefully. "Did you not have an admirer once who wrote you sonnets about your eyes being the colour – and having the potency – of cherry brandy? We can just lay some in and use that." Harry should never have brought Owen into Kingsman; really, he should have cut all ties long before now, since his only friend seems bound and determined to embarrass him in front of the boy with whom he is senselessly smitten.

"Ugh, appalling twice over; cherry brandy is swill," he says. "In any case, this should all be moot. Simply take a photograph of my eye and have your minions work from that, rather than trusting the judgement of two men whose fashion choices are routinely underwhelming." Eggsy and Owen appear amused by the insult, sharing another smile, but the girl looks offended on their behalf, so he directs the rest of his words her way. "Unless you'd like to take a crack at it, my dear? No? I suppose I could do it myself, as I've always had _an eye_ for colour matching."

Eggsy drops his gaze and tilts his body toward Owen. "Gonna go, yeah? Come over when you're done here." His back is straight and stiff as he departs.

Roxanne fixes Harry with what she must think is a Gorgon gaze. "You're a horse's arse," she enunciates crisply as soon as the door closes behind Eggsy. My, but the child is quick to anger. He entertains himself with picturing her contrition if he were to clap a hand to his head and pass off his pettishness as a by-product of his ongoing, fucking lingering trauma. He won't, though, not when Owen might be even momentarily alarmed – Owen, who is apparently on his way to his house to sit with Eggsy and his sister as if it were a regular arrangement.

He has reserves of poshness that Lancelot, the little parvenu, could only dream of. "A thoroughbred, my dear."

*

"Is it to be a standard glass eye or am I being fitted with one of your experiments?" he asks Merlin, who has been tapping on his tablet since Roxanne marched out. 

That's Owen's hurt on Merlin's normally impassive face. "When have I ever allowed you to be harmed or even compromised by one of my works in progress?"

"Sorry," he says, suddenly shaken and sincere. "I'm . . . not quite myself, apparently." He is, however, well-acquainted with that look of hurt on that particular face. Even though the last few decades of their relationship have had the camera pointed his way as Merlin, unseen, guides Galahad through trials and tribulations, he still knows how the man's expression crumples when Harry has delivered a blow. He is an undeserving shit, both when he is himself and when he isn't.

"That's probably a good thing, judging by my popularity," he continues, gesturing at the wide berth around his fucking infirmary bed, interrupted only by machinery and Owen: his oldest, best friend, who has leaned on him only once in their long history together. Not at his parents' funerals, when Owen had worn his emotion – not messy enough to be grief, just lovely enough to be sorrow – beautifully; not at the realisation of what Kingsman would ask of each of them; but only at the revelation of Julian's betrayal of his student and lover. Harry had offered to rip Julian's silvered, patrician head from his still-toned body, but Owen had gone silent and shuttered and unconscionably soft in Harry's arms, a wounded thing. He had _let himself be touched_ , and the significance of that had enraged Harry all the more.

If there is one thing Harry has never had to wonder about, it is his ability to be as cruel as Julian Robbins was. 

"Always fishing," Owen says, teasingly, kindly brushing aside what Harry has done. "As if you're not the pride and joy of Kingsman."

Perhaps that was true once. He honestly would rather be the pride and joy of Owen's life, to begin to pay back some of that unswerving friendship. "Arthur would have a few counter-arguments, I think," he says, putting out his hand, knowing at least not to touch directly but just invite Owen into his space.

Owen's big hand squeezes his rather more firmly than he'd expected. "Oh, bollocks, Harry, I forgot how much has changed."

"If you're going to try to convince me that Chester King has gone all sweetness and light –"

"Chester's dead." There's no satisfaction in Merlin's voice, but no pain either. "He was working with Valentine, and tried to kill Eggsy after using me to dispatch you to what was supposed to be your shuffling off this mortal coil. The lad was too sharp for the old git, turned the tables very neatly. Even managed to emphasise that being lower-class was what enabled him to get one over on Chester. That's our new Gaheris." 

"And the former Gaheris?" He summons up an image of the man – Jason Lannister – who'd had a permanently hungry look in his eyes; that look served him very well on honeypots, when taken by the susceptible in conjunction with the force of his resemblance to a Viking warrior. He wonders if Eggsy ever met his namesake, perhaps on one of his visits to the infirmary to sit at Harry's bedside. He wonders if the hours Eggsy spent watching his comatose form match the hours he's spent watching the footage of Eggsy soaring through the trials.

"Arthur's man to the end."

"Who is Arthur now?"

"Percival, since he was the last one to nominate a candidate who made it through to the table."

He does not want to discuss Lancelot, who seems like Eggsy's personal limpet. Or Percival's pain at losing the former Lancelot; James and Simon had both been at Eton and Oxford, though some years apart, and had been close. "But Eggsy is a knight now too."

The vertical lines between Owen's brows deepen, and Harry feels a hand on his cheek; he cannot laugh it away, his friend's worry. "Are you saying you want to be Arthur rather than Galahad?"

"I haven't lost my mind, just an eye." He swallows. "I did not think I was either, just now."

"You're Galahad until you say otherwise. This Arthur _knows_." Percival might know the demands of knighthood, but he doesn't know _him_ ; Simon, like the other knights of his generation, calls him and Owen "Harry" and "Salt" without an inkling of their true names or what they call each other. He feels unutterably dispirited at the thought, at the empty spaces in his life.

He hasn't felt this old in some time. Actually, he's felt quite hale and himself since he left this latest coma behind, so this reversion to pain and uncertainty is doubly unwelcome. "Go; you have a mission of your own, I believe." He cannot quite picture Owen minding a child, but perhaps that is simply because he has never met the child in question. It is unsettlingly easy to picture Eggsy and Owen talking and laughing with each other in his mews house, where the newest knight has no doubt settled. Perhaps Eggsy will cook them dinner – Owen could never be bothered about what he was shovelling into his mouth as long as it kept him fortified for hours, and certainly never took an interest in cookery – and they will sing the baby to sleep and then curl up together as the sky darkens. He does not know, does not know how to ask.

"Indeed. Good night, Galahad."

Code names, not real names or even their public ones. "Good night, Merlin." He lets the pain push him down into sleep.

*

He wakes up still feeling old, then wonders if this is really the first time he's woken since Owen left him. He hasn't been out of this godforsaken bed for as long as he can remember, doesn't even know how long it's been since he was shot. His hands are an old man's, prominently textured by ghostly indigo veins. He wants to push the button to summon someone, anyone, to stand by his bedside and speak to him like he's a real person and not just a decrepit knight hanging on by one fraying thread. No, he'd rather die than do any of that.

There's no real reason he shouldn't get out of this bed. From what he understands, Valentine's bullet was significantly weakened by his glasses but still managed to ricochet around his eye socket before lodging in his eye next to shattered high-density plastic. He fell heavily, but the bruising on the back of his head, shoulders, spine, and hips has now faded entirely, as have the glancing wounds inflicted by the most rabid of the churchgoers he slaughtered. His ears have mostly stopped ringing. He is going to get up, any second now.

He will go to Merlin's workspace and sit quietly beside him as he works. He can do that much at least.

But he is so very tired still, and he does not know if Owen has time for him just now. If Owen is back from his night with Eggsy, if Eggsy really does have a smile he keeps just for Owen. He's always been able to quantify Owen's charms – the trick to pulling, as he learned in sixth form, is to know how to set oneself apart from one's wingman but still suggest that the wingman's devotion is entirely merited – and knows quite well that part of what made everyone sit up and take notice was Owen's comprehensive and sincere indifference to pulling. Even after he'd grown into the striking lines of his face and the sinewy length of his limbs, Owen had never had stars in his eyes for anyone until his tutor at Trinity, had never engaged in either the bedpost-notching contests that tallied up the available girls or the fagging tradition that made sport of the boys. Owen did not like to be touched, period. So it is strange to see his openness with Eggsy now, their easy and silent communication; it is _unconscionable_ that Harry resents Eggsy's apparently infallible instinct, which means that Eggsy allows Owen to touch him without hastening to reciprocate.

Does it matter if Eggsy bestows smiles of a certain calibre on Owen, when he is equally capable of kissing Roxanne with an unencumbered mouth?

Owen enters the room before Harry can think any more bitter thoughts about Eggsy's passing himself around like a party favour, before he can quite articulate his fervent desire for _droit du seigneur_ to be reinstated, as Gaheris was _his_ candidate before he was anyone else's anything.

"What's wrong?" he asks before Owen can make any inconvenient enquiries about how he slept or how he feels.

"Half the agents are on missions, and I've only got three handlers available due to this piss-awful flu going round. And I'm due to have another excruciating chat with your doctor now that your latest test results will be in today." Owen doesn't sound particularly frazzled, but Harry knows how much stress he carries from the line of his shoulders, which he deliberately tries to camouflage with the softness of his jumpers. Harry had seen him cracked and split open for one long year and knows how gingerly he put himself back together.

"Why are we sticking around here, then?" he asks.

"We're not," Owen says, smiling triumphantly at him as he offers his strong arm to haul Harry out of the blasted bed.

The pushchair is a sad enough comedown that Harry convinces himself he'd be better off walking with his arms wrapped around Owen's waist, letting all of the knights and staff see Galahad and Merlin twined closely together like teenagers on Lovers' Lane. Owen is strong enough to take his weight indefinitely, and the man cannot be getting enough exercise if he is running a department with his numbers pared down so drastically, so a long, slow walk will suit them both. Never mind the solidity of the muscle Harry can feel under his hands once he stops worrying over whether he can even stand straight.

The trip is interminable – bloody HQ was designed like the minotaur's labyrinth, nothing where it should be – but at the last Harry is ensconced in a lovely wing chair upholstered in rust-coloured velvet in a space that seems far warmer than he remembers Merlin's cave-like office being. He had not anticipated the difficulty that walking one-eyed posed, how he kept trying to overcorrect his balance, and he is ready to rest.

Directly across from him is a back-lit white board scored with cross-hatching to make a graph. He can read Owen's strong, slanted capital letters: RISKS/EVENTS at the top, Probability of Occurrence on the x-axis, and Consequences of Occurrence on the y-axis. There are points plotted in two distinct colours, and as he watches, one of the labelled blue dots disappears and is replotted. Watching all of this happen as if by magic is wearying Harry's eye, so he turns his attention to the dimmer corners of the room. Owen has monitors stacked upon monitors at his workstation, but off to one side of that wall of screens is a small area lit by a tiny lamp that throws soft golden light. A paper with a child's drawing hangs there, given pride of place. It must be Daisy's handiwork, he realises. He cannot make out what she was trying to draw, or if a child her age was even capable of communicating visually; he looks at the emphatic strokes that have left thick deposits of wax on the paper and tries not to assign them any meaning.

One monitor attached to Merlin's computer comes to life then, and Harry sees Roxanne and Eggsy, giving each other one last visual check. Eggsy says, "Bend forward a tick, yeah?" and fastens the clasp of her delicate necklace at the nape of her smooth neck while she catches his hands on their descent to check his cufflinks. Wherever they are, it's late evening, just in time for a gala of some sort; he's in a slim-cut suit with razor-sharp creases and she's in a severely contoured cocktail dress that bares her knees, shoulders, and back. Eggsy's hand lands on her spine and she doesn't so much as shiver, as if its weight and warmth are too familiar to bother acknowledging. His fingers skate upward as they turn to face each other. It takes Harry a moment to work out that the camera must be in one of the diamond drops hanging from Roxanne's ears and not her pendant, a much more obvious location and what anyone with suspicions would no doubt latch upon. Given how close their faces are, there's no hiding the utter trust shining out from Eggsy's features. 

"Merlin," Gaheris says, "we got this, mate." Lancelot's determined nod says the same and Harry notes that the earring camera does not yet have the stabilising feature that the glasses cameras do; Merlin seems to be handling this particular mission himself but will have to pair Lancelot up with a handler not prone to motion-sickness in the future. When Roxanne turns to go, drawing a wrap around her shoulders, he sees the big rumpled bed behind her, her clothes and Eggsy's scattered familiarly over it. The sight makes him question again how much time has elapsed since he last drove Eggsy away.

"I'm quite certain, Gaheris, Lancelot," is all Merlin says. "They won't know what hit them." Harry watches Merlin watch the pair on the monitor, all casual touches and affectionate glances. Merlin takes a long sip from his coffee – addled, Harry knows, with a disgusting amount of milk – and nods approvingly at the picture they make. "Good," he says when Roxanne, still on Eggsy's arm, produces their invitation from her purse, and they both easily surrender their mobiles – either burners or time-delayed weapons of some sort, Harry isn't sure which.

They are young, bright, and beautiful, and even in a gathering of the like, they are still the cynosure of all eyes. When they move apart, drawn into separate conversations – it burns, that he can hear Roxanne's but not Eggsy's, hampered as they are by the limitations of a single camera attached to her person – they still have a couple's awareness of each other, fondness shining from their faces and showing in the speed with which they clasp hands again as soon as the small talk allows. He hopes they are at least passing messages to each other – fingerspelling against a palm or Morse-code squeezing – if they must be so obviously attached. He has no idea how on earth Owen is calmly watching all of this, unless he is looking only with Merlin's eyes and regarding this as a honeypot variant. Or the three of them have some understanding.

"Gently, gently now," Merlin murmurs to the knights, who have moved from a sleek waltz on the dance floor to investigating the secured study of the host without a hitch in their step. "We've yet to see how well this thing is guarded." Merlin, Harry sees, is _kind_. He knows this, of course, has known it for forty years, but it strikes him now in a way it had not back when they were jointly embarking on the grand new adventure of Kingsman, Owen following where Harry led. 

Gaheris and Lancelot look like they are encountering no issues whatsoever but appreciate Merlin's encouragement nevertheless. It is a far cry from the sort of words Harry had earned, back when he too was shiningly new; he remembers the then-Arthur and then-Gawain – who had been his mentor, which apparently had counted for very little with the man – discussing him as if he wasn't in the room. _Galahad coasts too much on what we've all been calling his charm_ was the phrase that stuck in his memory, coming as it did after a spectacularly successful mission that had included a seduction, an explosion, and a narrow escape from the consequences of each. They hadn't even bothered with the faint-praise part of the damning-him equation, and it had stung until Owen had entered, smiled approvingly at him, and listed all of the intelligence Harry had just won for Kingsman.

On the monitor, Lancelot and Gaheris have located the USB drives and are coolly widening the casings on her bodice to slip the slim drives beside the boning shaping her dress. Again, Harry considers how much of a challenge Merlin and his team found outfitting a lady spy rather than the regular gentlemen with appropriate accessories and gadgets; certainly Jeremy and the rest of the tailoring team have risen to the occasion, for both knights. Eggsy shines like a star on the screen, the sharp suit only accentuating his manifold charms: his hair is filaments of fire and bronze, his eyes are emeralds set in wrought gold, and his eyebrows are spiked arches of charcoal. Owen, watching him, shines too, his dark green eyes kindling as his mouth shapes congratulations – "a pair of naturals, y'are" – when the two knights successfully blend back into the crowd, their hands once more clasped together.

*

Owen had not struck him as wondrous when they first met, but to be fair, Harry had hardly been a prize himself. He was new, down to the alias he'd just invented, the softening that made his loathed given name just bearable, and itchy with the unfamiliarity of his new skin. Disappointed in himself, too, that it had taken him thirteen years to transform "Herrick" into "Harry." _Harry_ would be different and fun and a force to be reckoned with. _Harry_ would make his mark.

He lost track of how many boys he'd met that first day, how many pairs of eyes were sizing him up. There were two Philips and a Courteney sprinkled among all of the Jameses and Johns and Georges. And one boy, already grown tall and looking like he had no intention of stopping, who said, "I'm Owen Salter. I answer to Salt." Harry had looked at him then, marking the confident phrase betrayed by a diffident voice, the whippet-thin build and pin-straight dark hair. There was no answering gaze or spark, no sign that in less than one term, they would become a team, the tightest of we-two-against-the-worlds.

Harry thinks now that the word _affinity_ does not begin to cover it. To think that it all started because of how stupidly they'd been named, for poets they were too young to appreciate. " _Robert Herrick,_ " Harry had bemoaned. "As if I need to be called a pretty virgin and invited to 'make much of time' on what might as well be a daily basis."

" _Who's_ -" Owen stopped, blushed at the way his voice cracked, and then found a growl deeper than either of them had anticipated. "Who's been hounding you?"

"Nobody," Harry had said hastily. "Never mind." What did it matter what the older boys said, since he had Owen ("could have been worse, she could have named me Wilfred") at his side? "At least yours died heroically and published how much he wanted the world to fuck off." Saying "fuck" had still been new to him, but he hadn't let himself stumble over the word. He looked over at Owen – he _couldn't_ call him Salt like everyone else did, needed a name that was just for _him_ to say – who even in the sunlight had a face full of shadows. He waited to hear that at least _his_ namesake had evidently had some fun before kicking it, randy old sod.

Owen just made a pillow of his Geography book and looked at him. "Do you think he had the right of it?"

"Don't you?" he'd asked, but all he got was a raised eyebrow over a pair of closed eyes. Thinking back on it now, Harry has to remind himself that the friendship, the kinship he's shared with Owen, hadn't existed when he'd tossed that careless question, full of bravado, into the space between them just to see what the other boy would do. _He_ had barely existed, just a sprig of a newly minted teenager. Eggsy had not been thought of. And yet it is Eggsy he thinks of now, when he considers if the world really needs to fuck off or if there are indeed bits of it worth saving.

*

Owen is evidently spoiling for a fight, judging by the rigidity of his spine, but he targets neither Harry, creakily sitting up, nor Eggsy, padding behind him and stopping in the doorway. "Do come in," Harry says to Eggsy, who obliges him by shuffling forward and stopping with his hands clasped before him. Still a little skittish, then, and Harry curses himself, for his need to let his sharp tongue fly, and Eggsy, too, for being so relentlessly vulnerable to its lashings. "Now, what is going on?"

"The timing of this is not ideal; I'd hoped that your doctor wouldn't be such a wee shite about your upcoming surgery, but we can't delay a meeting of the full table any longer. The table meets today, and there will be votes, so your participation is mandatory."

"Very well," he assents. Owen or Eggsy can support him on the way, and if he's doing nothing more vigorous than sitting in a buttery-soft leather chair for a few hours, he should undergo no undue strain. "Shall we go now?"

"No, apparently you need to do nothing strenuous for the next three days, and walking at a snail's pace down a monitored hallway counts as such." Owen's sarcasm is withering, and a thing of beauty to behold. "Catch hold of this, and Eggsy'll show you how to use it. Much to do."

Harry takes the foldable laptop and watches Owen depart. Eggsy is waiting patiently for his attention. "How have you been, Eggsy?" he asks, the better to dispel the cloud hanging over the boy's head.

"Feelin' guilty," Eggsy says, and Harry's heart swells at this tender creature. "Pushed Merlin to get Rox 'n' me home this morning, and then Daisy saw somethin' she shouldn't've, and now I put one more thing on his plate, which the guv needs like a hole in the head, 'specially when he's already worried over you." 

Ah, so Eggsy's guilt is nothing to do with him – all to the good – and the way his accent has gone loose is a positive sign as well. "What happened with Daisy?"

Eggsy's face brightens as if a switch has been flipped, and Harry marvels that just the thought of his sister is enough to charm the boy. No one has ever felt like that about him, he would bet his life on it. "I was feedin' her her breakfast and had my glasses on. Picked her up to let Raf in, and that's when the glasses started transmitting info. Dais was snugged up against my cheek and saw everything, and now she wants to look through my glasses to see all the 'pwetty pitchers.'" Eggsy looks pleased by his sister's brightness, then takes a look at Harry and wilts, accent turning prim again. "What? Not like I'm cheek-to-cheek with anyone else most days, no one else's seen what she saw."

Harry does not know if he has the energy to sort through all of this; the thought of Eggsy so happily domestic in his house is buoying, though no doubt Daisy's presence has made a mess of the space. "And so now Merlin is tasking himself with keeping the output of the glasses high quality while rendering it invisible to anyone not wearing them?" _Who is_ Raf _?_ is what he really wants to ask.

"Yes," Eggsy says, evidently still waiting for a scolding.

"Probably should have been done ages ago," Harry allows, watching Eggsy relax by degrees, "and Merlin enjoys a challenge anyway."

"I been on him to relax," Eggsy says, just a little bit conspiratorial, and leans in, gesturing at the laptop. "You don' really need me to show you how all this works, do ya? I remember you encrypting some o' your glasses footage so that it took him longer'n he was used to to crack it."

"Do you know what Owen read at university?" Harry asks, smiling at the thought that Eggsy has saved up the little bits of knowledge of Harry that he's gained. He likes, too, the way Eggsy's formality slips when he's comfortable.

"How to be a lovely, twisty bastard?" The boy's eyes are shining with mirth.

"Linguistics, most competitive course at Trinity, and he sailed through. His mind works in mysterious ways –"

"His wonders to perform," Eggsy completes. "What? I aced my poetry course."

It takes Harry a moment to compose himself, a moment that Eggsy – cheeky beggar – fills by whistling "Why Can't the English?" just to rub in how capable he is of surprising people who see only his surface. Harry sits up a little straighter, rejoicing at the relative lack of pain, and asks, "So what did have him so upset?"

Eggsy's music trails off and he bites his lip. "He 'n' your doc've been having words. He said 'e knew bloody well how to read a brain scan – he's had enough bleedin' practice with yours – and she said she needed to be satisfied he'd thought all the medical implications of a bionic eye through, however much of a genius he was at the mechanical, computer-y parts." Eggsy tilts forward slightly, the better to confide a secret. "Ask me, she's got a crush an' is doin' her best to spend extra time with 'im. Hard to blame her."

His tone is clearly one of affectionate approval, but Harry cannot seem to decode it, to see what lies beneath, even though he knows his doctor's crush is doomed to remain unrequited. "And who is 'Raf'?"

Eggsy looks surprised by the question. "My driver. Ain't you met him before?"

 _Rafael_ , Harry's mind supplies. Handsome, mid-thirties, spoke with a musical Balearic accent. Are _all_ of Eggsy's hours occupied by surrounding himself with better options than Harry?

"You let him inside the house?" Harry asks. Stephen, his own driver, always waited dutifully in the car for Harry to descend from the mews house; Stephen knows his place and is a gentleman, and Rafael should be able to do the same. 

"You got a real fuckin' thirst for knowledge today, Harry," Eggsy says dryly. "Yeah, he an' Dais get along great." So Eggsy is surrounding himself with better options than Harry _and_ has had no qualms about letting them into his sister's safe space. Eggsy has never asked _him_ to meet Daisy. "His wife was, y'know, expectin' when she fell on V-Day."

He still doesn't know the whole story of what happened on that day, only that Roxanne played a significant part while Eggsy served another and that both were handled simultaneously by Owen. He opens his mouth to ask when Eggsy says, "Got to go, Galahad. Meeting's in ten. Dial in and you'll see all our smilin' faces, right?"

*

Eggsy must meet Roxanne in the corridor – where Harry is not yet allowed to walk, because he's been demoted back to toddlerhood; Harry can hear, once they enter the Round Table room with its big rectangular table, the tail end of their conversation.

"Nah, Dais loves JB. Even started walking on tiptoe when I was holdin' her hands to see if her toenails would make the same clicking sound on the kitchen floor, was fuckin' hilarious," Eggsy is saying. Surely not _everything_ his sister does needs to be reported so minutely or adoringly.

Roxanne, of course, gives no indication that anecdotes about her honorary niece are unwelcome; Harry does her the justice to acknowledge that she presents herself as a partner to Eggsy very handsomely. "That reminds me, I need to make an appointment to have Andromache groomed." Harry rolls his eye – for the first time disconcerted by the feeling of emptiness in his left socket – at the pretension of the name Lancelot had chosen for her idiotic poodle; she must have read Classics at Oxford. She probably had memorised an epic's worth of hexameters praising the thighs and throats of beautiful boys and could recite them to Eggsy for as long as he kept her mouth free of his sweet kisses.

The other active knights who are at HQ start filing in, and Harry keeps a careful tally of which smile at Gaheris and which pretend that they cannot see the fully fledged knight sitting at the table. He will have to have talks with Bors, Geraint, and Caradoc, and it bothers him not a whit to think of how little those pissants will enjoy those conversations. Harry thinks he might also have a chat with Percival – now Arthur – to discover why the man's eyes sweep so warmly over Gaheris and Lancelot both, always as a pair. They are sitting as close as the ugly, mustard-yellow armchairs allow, heads bent together; perhaps they simply find comfort in banding together, the youngest knights by far, and the two whose inclusion had been hotly debated even when they were only candidates. 

Some of Merlin's staff enter, looking slightly out of place, and take seats along the wall instead of at the table – Harry thinks he recognises Desdemona, Falstaff, Rosalind, and Viola – and there is a pause to allow a few refectory employees to serve. That ghastly soup tureen inflicts itself on his remaining eye, and Harry resolves again to be the one to smash it to bits before he dies in the line of duty. One last heroic act for the greater good.

The meeting itself is taxing simply due to its tedium, though Arthur does his best to keep things moving at a rapid clip. There are the new Lancelot and Gaheris to formally welcome with a toast, funds to be allocated to various projects, Tristan and Kay and Percival trials to prepare for, and administrative matters galore. Harry unmutes his feed just long enough to vote on each measure. It is all humdrum, and he can feel his attention slipping.

It is new and interesting when Arthur shows off the RISKS/EVENTS graph, ceding the floor to Merlin, who takes the knights through the naming and plotting of various occurrences; the blue coordinates are plotted automatically, by an algorithm Merlin has created to track global chatter patterns, while the orange set is manually plotted by Merlin and Arthur themselves, sorting through the most high-profile data every three days in order to assess which missions the knights needed to be sent on. Eggsy, Harry notes, looks less surprised and more thoughtful than most of the knights and techs sitting around the table in flesh or in hologram. He wears the look very well, studious and pensive like he's auditioning for a Peter Weir film.

Arthur finally calls the meeting to a close and Harry sighs, shakes out his legs, and rolls his neck. There's always a rush for the door, as if everyone can't wait to get out of such company, and Harry's amused to see Eggsy has realised no one is ever as quick off the mark as Owen so he might as well sit tight. Merlin's team sprint behind their leader like technophilic ducklings. Roxanne lingers with Eggsy, of course, and Arthur lays a friendly hand on her arm and then Eggsy's on his own way out the door. Harry should be shutting down the feed and getting some rest, but watching Eggsy is too much of a draw. Even when Eggsy is pulling a disgusted face at the state of the room.

"Christ, these arseholes can be such pigs," he says, gesturing at the table, which bears not just the cups and crumbs of a tea service but the dirtied plates and bowls and cutlery of a full luncheon, for the knights anyway. He starts stacking the dishes and finds a still-folded napkin to scrub at spots of soup on the mahogany.

"Eggsy, that's not your job. Leave it," Roxanne suggests.

"Shit like this gets left, it gets harder to clean," Eggsy says crisply. "Either the knights gotta clean up after themselves like decent people or they gotta give the canteen crew the security clearance to get in here before all this shit sets." He's working as he spouts off, and the room already looks significantly better. "Don't want anything happening to their big dramatic table, do they? Even if it ain't round?" Eggsy looks up at Roxanne, smiling reflexively at whatever expression she is wearing – Harry cannot see her face from the angle of the camera – before looking suspicious. "What?"

"You," she says, the word imbued with affection. "Let me help."

"Nah, all done, and 'sides, you didn't spill a drop, my lady."

"Neither did you."

"I know better'n to waste food, specially 'f it's as good as this," Eggsy points out, dropping the napkin on top of the stacks of dishes he's assembled. "Hey, Rox, c'n I ask?"

"Ask what?"

"What'd you say to Percival – Arthur, I mean – to get him to take me on?" Evidently his failure in the final test is still weighing on Eggsy, despite the formal welcome he just received. Harry feels a squirm of guilt in his belly, but he is curious too, not least to know why Eggsy thinks it was Roxanne's word, rather than his own or Merlin's, that weighed with Percival.

"I know how he thinks."

"And?"

"And I also know that one of his weaknesses is Victorian novels." Roxanne sounds awfully smug, as if that knowledge were hard-won and not simply a product of Simon's being her parents' close friend and, if Harry's not mistaken, her elder sister's godfather. 

"An' what? I'm enough of a Dickensian urchin to tug at his heartstrings?" From the confining safety of his blasted bed, Harry laughs at Eggsy's outraged conclusion. The boy does seem to have a head for literature, which is heartening. Equally cheering is that Roxanne has not put paid to Eggsy's complaints by drawing him into a kiss.

"I told him I was rereading an old favourite and found a passage that described you exactly." Now her eyes drop, as if she is shy. Harry would bet she has been using that look for years to sort out which boys were too stupid to recognise the danger she presents.

"You're draggin' this out like a movie villain," Eggsy says, unafraid, and he and Harry watch as colour climbs her cheeks. "Just spill – must be good to get you blushin' like that. What, you tell him I was your one and only?" His voice is light and teasing, and he reaches out to tug her into his arms. Harry sucks in a sharp breath at the phrase, at his desire to call Eggsy his one and own.

She goes willingly, hiding her face in his chest. "Look it up, you oaf. What Hannah Thornton thinks of John."

Eggsy waits, evidently thinking he's going to get more. He drops a kiss on her hair and rocks them from foot to foot. "That's it? Roxypet, doncha wanna just tell me?"

"No, you're terrible, and I take it all back," she says primly, pushing him away.

"Too late!" He moves away obligingly, laughing a little. "C'mon, let's go to the kennel and pick up your pup." They leave the room and Harry shuts down the feed on the laptop, searching online for Hannah Thornton. The novel is _North and South_ – really, it seems that Roxanne must have calculated what would be most likely to appeal to Simon, who has always been a romantic at heart – and Harry settles in to read, secure in the knowledge that he can very well make the case to his nurses that he is following orders and resting; what could be more relaxing than lounging in bed with a triple-decker, even one he has to read online?

He gets caught up in the story, lulled by the way Margaret resists romance, and nearly misses the lines when he at last stumbles across them. Roxanne must love Eggsy very much to have found his echo in the words: _her heart gave thanks for him day and night; and she walked proudly among women for his sake._ How on earth is he supposed to compete with that?

*

Harry's on pins and needles – ah, tailor humour, as Percival would say – because he would have sworn that his enforced rest period was supposed to be only three days, and so he naturally assumed that he'd be getting his new eye on day four. Only it has been close to a week, and his doctor is still hemming and hawing and he wants to tell her he's naming the worst of his incipient bedsores after her. Not that he remembers her name, only that Owen looks vastly irritated by any mention of her and that Eggsy suspects her own reaction to Owen – to _Merlin_ – is far more amorous.

"Doctor," he says, putting everything he has into his minatory tone, "what is causing this tedious delay?"

She's made of tough stuff, and refuses to wilt. He is put to mind, unpleasantly, of what Roxanne will likely be like in another twenty years. _Eggsy's little fishwife_ , he thinks, though he knows the nastiness should be beneath him; she clearly loves Eggsy, even if Harry resents her for the feeling's being requited. "Preparations are underway; it is not only a matter of _your_ readiness, Galahad."

"I'm aware," he says, snappishly. How Arthur could have let Eggsy go on a mission just now, when Harry has long hours to while away and no company with which to do so, is inconceivable. 

Her little hand pats his, and it's rather nice, even if she is just buttering him up so he'll put in a good word with Merlin for her. "We're all trying to ensure this goes off without a hitch."

It could be worse, he's well aware. "Thank you."

"Civility!" she exclaims, turning up one corner of her mouth. It's a little galling that he feels guilt at her evident surprise; he's supposed to be the _preux chevalier_ , but instead he's an old man grumpy because he's not allowed out of his bed. He snags her hand with minimal fumbling and presses a kiss to the back of it. Her lotion is quite pleasantly scented, vaguely floral. "Dear sir," she says playfully, smiling a little more widely, "you are my top priority. Merlin's too."

 _That_ he doesn't need anyone to tell him. It's been that way for forty years, with the exception of the three years Owen was blazing his way through the Linguistics Tripos and burning up with love for his tutor. And the year after, when Owen was preoccupied with becoming Kingsman's first tech-oriented Merlin and also, when he had time and energy, reclaiming the ruin of his life. It's been all Harry all the rest of the time, and Harry has long since let himself love it, need it, even as he laments that the one time Owen wanted something for himself, it blew up so spectacularly in his face.

He's never kept track of the statistics – the number of people he's fucked would probably be greater than the number of people he's killed, wait, he's forgetting Kentucky, and even in his heedless, beautiful youth he couldn't have been deemed a Messalina, so killed takes the lead – but the only person he's _thirsted_ to kill and been denied is Julian Robbins.

*

Following in his namesake poet's footsteps, he'd sought a Phyllis, a Julia, and a Sylvia as diversions for the summer, and as he rose from Sylvia's bed he was certain that he was going to be late to meet Owen. Sylvia's pellucid eyes were less striking by daylight than they'd been at dusk, but it would have been heartless to leave her without some indication of enjoyment to conceal how much more of his interest was on the clock's face rather than hers. Gesture made and a hasty washing-up completed, he pelted down to the Fellows' Bowling Green, where Owen was stretched out full-length on the lawn, eyes closed but clearly awake and thinking; Harry had never known anyone who made cogitation look as good as Owen did. 

"Late again, Heretic," Owen murmured as Harry stood above him, panting.

"Arse," Harry said, nudging that portion of Owen's anatomy with the tip of his shoe. "After I ran all this way just for you."

"You'll have to work on the sincerity of your selfless gestures if you want anyone to buy into them," Owen said unhurriedly, his voice warm with affection, and Harry, knowing Owen's eyes were still closed, let himself fucking bask in it. "We both know you ran just because you wanted to look dramatic and didn't want to take the chance anyone might stop you on your way."

"Yes, alright," Harry acknowledged, slumping in a sweaty heap on the grass beside him. He peered over at his friend. "You're looking very . . . uplifted." He tried to mask his suspicions with the dreadful approximation he did of Owen's accent – anything to keep Owen's eyes from looking like stars when he finally opened them. "On yer knees at the kirk, were ye, thinkin' o' the bleedin' body o' Christ?"

Owen laughed outright, scrunching up his eyes and rolling to his side before he choked. "Y're a right sweetie-wife," he said, the music of his natural tones robbing the insult of his sting. "Never ye mind if I was on my knees las' nigh'."

The elation that Harry had felt at kindling such honest amusement in his friend popped like an overtaxed balloon. It wasn't that he grudged Owen his happiness with the handsome and distinguished Dr. Robbins, that he doubted their capacity for discretion, or that he wished Owen would grace his bed instead; it was merely worrying to see Owen flinging himself headlong into the affair, wholly absorbed in this man, when he'd never so much as nursed a pash for anyone else before. Too much, too sudden, too _ardent_ , and Harry could not tell how or why or when, but he _knew_ Owen would come to grief. He did not know how to say there was a danger in loving so much, because Owen had been doing it for years with him – that was just how Owen loved him, filling up all the empty spaces and shoring him up so he could take on the world. 

He didn't think Robbins – dashing, successful, brilliant – had those same empty spaces. Where would the rest of Owen's boundless love go when Robbins had taken what he wanted?

Owen sat up, the smooth cap of his long dark hair disordered until he ran an impatient hand through it so it clung properly to his skull. "Graceless boy," he said, as if he'd grown immensely old and wise while waiting for Harry. "If I was looking uplifted, it was for good cause. I've been working on something. I want you to see it first." Owen rolled smoothly to his feet and looked down at him.

Harry knew very well how much of a prat he looked when he smiled his real smile – too toothy, too quiveringly dimpled – but Owen had been thinking of him and so it couldn't be helped. 

"Come with me to the Lab," Owen said, and the prospect of spending the rest of the day with Owen spooled out in front of Harry like a shining ribbon. When he held out his hand, Harry took it and let himself be pulled up.

*

Harry wakes to a sweet scent in the air and the sound of ravenous slurping, but some part of him is back with the dark-haired, starry-eyed Owen of their second Trinity summer. Sitting by his infirmary bed is Owen, looking just as wonderstruck now as he had then, his mouth fully occupied with something small and evidently delectable. Harry casts his eye down to the foot of his bed and sees Eggsy, lovely in a slate-coloured henley and the inevitable cap, holding a plum out to him. It's the dull greenish-gold pointillist pattern on the wet, wine-coloured skin that allows him to identify where Eggsy's mission had been. "Tell me Istanbul is still standing," he says, and Eggsy cracks a jubilant smile.

"All of it, from the Cistern up to the castles," Eggsy says, crowing a little. He gestures with the plum. "'Ere. We been gorging ourselves on these. Want?"

Harry nods his assent and Eggsy places the dense, cool weight of the fruit into his cupped palm so he doesn't have to grope blindly. The damp skin lacks the bitterness Harry is used to with plums, and the magenta flesh is searingly sweet. Eggsy's eyes grow wide at the unashamed sounds he and Owen make as they devour his offerings. "So, I guess gennelmen don't eat fruit in public?"

"Give me the rest of the plums and I'll take this to the privacy of my own home," Owen offers, not missing a beat, chasing a drop of juice down the side of his hand. Harry attempts to glare at him while still sucking at the fruit in his mouth, so sweet that his eye keeps closing as if he's being drugged.

"Yeah, fine, already took some home to my mum anyway when I went to get out of that fuckin' stiflin' suit. Bulletproof, yeah, but there's times when breathable's a higher priority."

Owen's voice is wry. "Ye didn't have to put on trousers at all if ye were so overheated, Eggsy. What good y'think those jeans are doing ye I honestly couldn't say."

Harry chokes a little when he finally sees Eggsy's trousers, as the boy has moved to the side of his bed to twirl and preen a little before Owen. The jeans are skin-tight – Harry is prepared to swear that he can make out the moles dotting Eggsy's thick thighs – and barely cover his arse. "What? My recessives?" Eggsy asks cheekily, and Harry is all the more smitten at the punning name bestowed by this puckish boy. "You don't think they suit me?" Owen gives in and laughs, and Eggsy does too; they sound lovely together. "Nah, shoulda done laundry before I left, 's all. Or bought a pair at the Covered Market. Lucky I still fit into these."

Lady Luck has evidently been hanging round Harry's hospital bed on this fine day, perhaps waiting for a peek at Eggsy so underdressed. 

Eggsy says, "That reminds me – Daisy's new thing, O, you gotta see this. Mum's goin' mental, but it's aces." He pulls up something on his mobile and hands the device to Owen, who's cleaned his hands and disposed of his rubbish, while Harry, ignored, sits dumbly holding his plum stone and hoping one of them will narrate whatever's happening on the mobile screen. He's trying not to think about Eggsy's nickname for Owen, the implied intimacy of it.

Disconcerted, Harry hears a woman's voice – must be Michelle's – speaking in that bright tone most often used to cajole small children and animals. "C'mon, luv, time to do your dance to show Eggsy." An aggressively cheery melody about colours and shapes comes pouring out of the mobile's speaker, and Harry watches Owen's face, lit up by the screen and uncomfortably open. Eggsy is watching Owen as well, plus nodding along with the song. "Good girl!" Michelle cheers when the music at last, mercifully, stops. "Now say bye-bye, Dais."

Eggsy leans forward, anticipatory grin getting wider, so this must be what he wanted Owen to witness. Harry still cannot see the screen but he can hear the piping voice of a small child say, "Ezzy out!"

Michelle tries again. "No, luv, it's bye-bye, and then we wave, righ'?"

"Ezzy out!" Daisy repeats firmly, much to the delight of Owen and Eggsy. Harry recalls the phrase from Eggsy's own video for his sister, but there is no reason to celebrate the child's mistaking one phrase for another. He watches in disbelief as Owen returns the mobile and gives Eggsy's cheek a soft double-tap. Eggsy does not shy away from the touch, and Owen rises, disconnecting his blasted tablet from the charger behind his chair. 

"Heretic," Owen says, but Harry has the distinct impression that he's communicating something along quite different lines to Eggsy, "sleep tonight and in the morning you'll get a new eye."

What has changed, he doesn't know, but apparently the stars have sufficiently aligned to get him into surgery, and Harry is not about to protest. Eggsy's starry eyes are shining with gratitude as he turns to watch Owen leave, enough that Harry belatedly suspects that Owen has delayed until Eggsy is back from his mission.

"Harry," Eggsy says, squaring his shoulders, then relaxing again, smiling disbelievingly. "Here, gimme that," he says, pointing his chin at the plum stone. "No need to hold it like it's the Holy Grail." Eggsy takes it and drops it in the bin. Harry's hand is still sticky, but it is entirely implausible that Eggsy could fit even a paper-thin handkerchief into any pocket of those jeans, so he settles for a tissue from the box next to his bed. "I got somethin' to say, and I dunno if I shoulda said it ages ago or still shouldn't be sayin' it now, but I jus' – I want to tell you."

Harry looks up from wiping his fingers to take in Eggsy's expression. His face is clean and bright, the charcoal of his cap setting off his eyes very beautifully. Now, at long last, is the time when Eggsy will hash out all of the hateful things Harry said before he landed himself in this hospital bed by way of storming away from his boy and getting himself shot in the eye. Harry will listen, beg for the forgiveness Eggsy already offered, and sleep knowing that his dreams will spiral around the scene, imagining a thousand small tweaks that could have changed it entirely.

Eggsy doesn't blink, but a tide of blood climbs his cheeks. "I love you, Harry." Harry cannot breathe, cannot react at all; he is a doomed adventurer turned to stone by a mythical creature. "I want you well, I wan' you to be Galahad on missions, I wan' you to be Harry Hart. Please."

It's not the most coherent speech he's heard, particularly from one whom he's seen kiss Roxanne and be touched tenderly by Owen; it would be easy to consider it platonic, but for the boy's blush. That crest of pink gives Harry hope, which in turn makes every inch of his skin feel overheated. He snaps out of his stillness suddenly, kicking at the sheets tangled around his legs, rucking up his pyjama trousers as well as the bedcovers. Eggsy's face when he sees Harry's bare calves and ankles – he's always had well-turned ankles and shapely calves, or so marks and larks the world over have told him – confirms that the boy means every word. "Please," Eggsy says again instead of leaning down to press his mouth to Harry's sugar-painted lips. Harry tilts his chin up slightly, hoping to entice. "For me," Eggsy says, then turns to go, letting Harry off the hook he very much wants to be on.

*

Harry did not understand why Owen's present to him would be a pair of remarkably ugly spectacles. "I don't wear glasses," he pointed out, then considered the likely rebuttal. "And I don't cat around enough to need a disguise just to cross the lawn." The dark slash of Owen's raised eyebrow was eloquent. "Fine, I do. But it's not like they're all on the warpath."

"You do have the devil's own luck," Owen said, which was hardly fair; Harry was quite good at selecting beautiful people who were too wrapped up in themselves to react dramatically to the inevitable loss of his companionship. "Now hush up and try them on."

Heaving a sigh as if he'd been grossly inconvenienced instead of spared an afternoon and evening of procrastinating on his essay on the penny post, most likely by finding his next lover, Harry obliged. "I don't suit them anyway." Owen gestured impatiently. "Why do we need to do this here?" Harry asked, then stood stock-still when he caught sight of Owen's smiling, blinking face on the closest computer monitor. The Laboratory was empty but for them, and he had no problem looking foolish in front of Owen – he'd never have survived this long if he had – but he could not help silently bemoaning just how much of an idiot he must appear. "Are the glasses a camera?" he asked, wondering _again_ just how many times he was going to have to revise his estimation of Owen's intelligence; four estimations ago was the first time he'd asked himself what on earth could make his friendship valuable to someone stratospheres above him. "The lenses, I mean?"

Owen's smile grew broader and happier, untouched by pride as if it weren't down to him that this remarkable technology existed. "Just wait," he said. "Turn the other way." Harry tore his gaze from that enraptured expression to see a photograph of something intimidatingly mechanical. "You're looking at Babbage's Difference Engine Number One," Owen said. "Turn." Harry pivoted a quarter turn to face the window. "Now you're looking at the glass and trying to catch your reflection. Don't worry, the specs do suit you after all, vain bastard." Harry laughed and dropped his hand, guiltily, from his face. "Turn back to the photograph, please."

Harry obliged, rocking back on his heels when tiny green lines of type appeared on the lenses. "'This is the Difference Engine. It is incomplete. It was built by Charles Babbage and Joseph Clement using public funds,'" Harry read aloud, haltingly, his eyes not knowing where to focus, as the type somehow sat over the image. He whirled around, pushing the glasses up to sit on top of his head, and saw Owen lift his hands from the keyboard. "You were typing that and it showed up instantaneously." Owen looked lit up in a way that went beyond happiness and Harry wanted to fold him in his arms just to know what it felt like to hold a shooting star that only kept rising. "What _are_ you going to do next?" he asked, not bothering to disguise his awe.

"Sleep for days," Owen said. "Come back with me if you've nothing else on."

Harry prowled around Owen's room as Owen slept like the dead, one long line sprawled diagonally along the bed, duvet twisted under him. Harry turned up stacks of Owen's notes in those neat slanted letters that to him always connoted swiftness of thought and surety of purpose; he found a treasure-trove of murder-mystery paperbacks, all creased spines and yellowing pages; he stumbled over thick linguistics textbooks that had, pressed between their glossy leaves, sheets of creamy stationery with arcane symbols he couldn't understand but knew must be love letters from Dr. Robbins to his prize pupil, written in some ancient language with a complicated grammar. Harry put everything back to order and settled down cross-legged on an unoccupied corner of the bed with _Brat Farrar_. 

Heading back to his room after a rather catch-as-catch-can dinner at the Servery with a tousle-haired and sleepy-eyed Owen, he met a man with the yellow hair and light eyes of the Brat he'd just been reading about. The man's name was Robert, and Harry – whose namesake's poems had inspired half his summer amours – decided to exorcise the poet and end the season with a suitable bang by bedding this Robin.

*

"Oh," is all Eggsy, framed enchantingly by the doorway, has time to say before Harry stalks up the lane and kisses him. He does not care whether Stephen is properly reversing the car behind him or lingering to watch; every neighbour Harry has is welcome to watch him stake his claim to this toothsome morsel who's been living in his house.

Eggsy keeps trying to talk, and his mouth wiggles against Harry's in a manner unconducive to the proper kissing Harry wants to give him. He gets his hand on Eggsy's jaw and presses at his chin with his thumb, opening Eggsy's mouth. That does the trick; Eggsy is still clumsy, unexpectedly, but at least he's kissing back, sweet-lipped and heavy-tongued. Harry makes a firm, approving noise when Eggsy's arms wind around his neck, and Eggsy moans a bit.

Harry is in no mood to be gentle – not after his fucking interfering doctor kept him for nearly a _week_ after his surgery, claiming she needed to make sure his equilibrium was restored and that his brain understood how to process the signals the prosthetic eye was sending – but he will admit, if only to himself, that the enforced alone time in his infirmary chamber meant he was fully confident again of his spatial awareness. It means he can reach out and touch Eggsy exactly as the boy's meant to be touched, and he plans to wring that same shyly defiant declaration of love out of Eggsy for as long as his voice still works.

Not that Eggsy can use his mouth just yet, not when Harry's happily plundering its delectable softness. He knows how long his boy can go without needing oxygen, but it seems his sense of time has gone askew, because Eggsy frees himself and takes a heaving, gasping breath with his eyes wide and his hand pressed against Harry's chest. In a move lifted from a ballroom and adapted to a battleground, Harry tilts one shoulder to knock the hand away and press their chests together. Mercy is irrelevant, he thinks as he bites Eggsy's firm mouth open. This is what Eggsy asked for with his confession of love.

He takes the grunt from Eggsy as a sign of surrender and starts moving again, striding forward towards the base of the staircase so that Eggsy's bare feet step unsurely backwards up the carpeted stairs. Months in this house do not seem to have done Eggsy any good in learning the curve of the spiral steps, and Harry's too randily impatient to find his hesitation charming; he simply bulldozes forward and lets Eggsy's feet fall where they may, uncaring that Eggsy's unbalanced weight pitches forward against him and backwards to knock against the framed paintings at the landing at various points of the turn. They fare better once in the corridor, though the cream paint of the walls hardly makes the best setting for one of Eggsy's fairer colouring. The chocolate of the duvet is far more suited for that, and Harry simply does not stop, pushing forward until Eggsy is flat on his back on the bed and Harry's knee slots between his. Eggsy's eyes are dazed as he looks up, as if he's seeing through the ceiling to some exalted space. 

Why Eggsy is playing chaste is beyond Harry's impaired reason, but it is like a match to tinder. Where else did his little love think his confession would lead them but to bed?

He must look as ravenous as the former Gaheris did on his worst days, stripping the boy out of his casual clothes without ceremony. He looks up the length of Eggsy's body, from slim ankles to rising cock, from dusky navel to glinting cheekbones. Meanly, Harry uses his shoulders to punch open space for himself between Eggsy's trembling thighs, which spread wide with a gymnast's muscle memory; he remembers compulsively replaying the footage of Roxanne watching Eggsy stretch and saying, in a voice not quite certain of itself, "You are the bendiest boy I know." Every time he cued up Eggsy's fantastically inspiring repertoire of splits and arches, he'd wondered if Roxanne's imagination could sink to the depths of depravity where he regularly dwelt when Eggsy was the subject at hand.

He drags his eyes back down the smooth, bare body laid out before him in the mid-morning light, watching the delicately sprung collarbones shift as Eggsy pants and tries to meet his gaze. Eggsy looks unutterably shy – the boy is damnably alluring – and Harry just manages to get the last button of his own shirt undone before he has to dip his head and take a few avid sucks of the hot cock in front of him. His fingers move to the drawer of the bedside table and dip messily into the jar of lube he flips open before they probe the boy's hole, stroking and stretching greedily. Eggsy yowls indecorously, and that's it, Harry cannot draw this first claiming out any longer; he rolls back on his haunches, unfastens and shoves down his trousers and pants, and spits Eggsy on his cock. 

Eggsy goes still then, just for a moment, before his heels begin scrabbling on the bed and his back arches like he's being resuscitated. The sounds he is making are indescribable and Harry's cock feels like iron while the rest of him is weightless, inconsequential; his cock alone is enough to drive Eggsy up the length of the bed with successive thrusts, Eggsy saying _oh oh oh_ as they go. Harry kisses the throat issuing those artfully choked little sounds. He's nearly done coming, just ploughing through the aftershocks, when he remembers he has a hand and drops it to Eggsy's cock, still valiantly stiff, and strokes him off with brutal efficiency. All of the air in Eggsy's lungs seems to leave him on one long sigh once both his inside and outside have been painted with white.

Eggsy's got enough of it back for Harry to hear the hitch in his breath when Harry, spent, angles his head to take little sipping kisses from Eggsy's mouth. The bare skin of Eggsy's forearms is warm against Harry's stiff collar, catching the flushed skin of his neck and chest in random places. Eggsy's hand comes up, not to divest Harry of his undone shirt and trousers, but to cup his cheek and run a curious thumb under his new eye. Eggsy buries his face in Harry's neck, smiling against the loose, soft skin there, and Harry cannot cope with Eggsy's unerringly finding all the worst and most obviously aged bits of him, so he pulls Eggsy back by the scruff of his neck. 

Eggsy goes, beamingly satisfied yet, the tones of his eyes warmed from glass to the sea. Harry, pulling out of the heated splendour of his body, looks up and freezes. This close and with his frenzied thirst slaked, he cannot help noticing that though his new eye works in perfect synchrony with the other, allowing him to regain his perspective, it processes colour with a slight difference. Eggsy is a blushing green-eyed boy from one view but paler and bluer-eyed from the other. It is sharply disorientating, and Harry closes his eyes, trying to get his bearings back. He feels almost seasick. He feels Eggsy wiping away the spunk coating their bellies with some soft, bunched-up material and then fishing out a pillow so that they can lay their heads on it comfortably.

With his right cheek pressed into the depths of the pillow, his right eye sees only the ivory of the pillowcase, but his left is free to wander over the fine grain of Eggsy's skin, the delicate strength of his features. Eggsy shivers then, so Harry draws the far edge of the duvet up and over them both. His hand stays pressed to Eggsy's downy back, spread fingers just touching each shoulder blade.

*

He'd felt seasick quite a lot, his first few goes with the spectacles, and made the mistake of telling Owen so. Owen smiled his dangerous, toothy smile that Harry had let dare him into all manner of idiocy over the years, and Harry – he _could_ be taught, after all – was instantly on his guard. "What?"

"There are times, Heretic, when you're quite brilliant," Owen said. "Thank ye for the idea."

"What idea?" 

"I'd wager ye haven't got any better at reading the lenses without tripping over your feet," Owen teased instead of answering, which got Harry riled up enough to drop his query.

"It's quite difficult – the words pop up without any warning!" he said heatedly. "You try it!" Bad enough he hadn't realised that Owen had shifted – or rather expanded – his focus from all of those ancient languages and grammars to messing around with computers; he hadn't a prayer of keeping up with his friend now.

"I know," Owen soothed. "I'd never spring anything on you without testing it on myself first for safety's sake."

As if that were any better; Owen was irreplaceable. Harry snatched at the case holding the glasses and put them on. He was getting quite used to the weight of the contraption on the bridge of his nose, and even growing to like the look of it on his face. "Type something."

"We're not actually in the Laboratory right now, you realise." Even being gently mocked by Owen was worth it, for how much time they were getting to spend together. Harry was never happier than when he was with Owen, but Owen had been fathoms deep in work for months now, and growing ever more dazzling under Robbins's tuition in all his spare time.

When they reached the Laboratory and Owen casually picked the locks to get them in, Harry was awake to the night's possibilities, a sense of mischief sparking along his skin. Owen, too, was bright-eyed, and Harry's breath quickened at the reminder that this was his best friend, still a boy for all his brilliance. It was disappointing to hear Owen say, "Just sit quietly for five minutes, if you can; I need to set things up."

Unaccountably jittery, Harry sat until he had to get up and start pacing, well away from whatever Owen was typing into the computer. His brain returned to the issue from which Owen was meant to be diverting him. Robin had intimated that he'd like to try having Harry – rather than just letting Harry take him – and Harry had been nonplussed, unable to formulate an answer. He'd rather thought that Robin had liked and responded to some dominant signal he was putting out; if that was not true, then what was Robin with him for?

"Ready?" Owen asked, and Harry snapped back into himself and the present. He nodded, and Owen said, "Walk to the end of this aisle and back, please."

Harry did, and on the return journey, letters popped up on his lenses even though Owen wasn't typing. He did his best to keep his pace even, his loose and swinging gait unchecked, while reading the words. It looked to be Owen's favourite of his own namesake's poems, and Harry shivered because there was something a little uncanny about reading that particular poem while being alone in the near-dark with such a formidable intelligence, even when that intelligence was the person he loved most in the world. He didn't realise his steps had slowed after all, didn't realise he'd walked farther than before, until Owen caught his hips and shook them playfully. "You were meant to read the lines out loud, you numpty. And you still look like Jesus, eyes going in two different directions."

Harry wasn't about to get distracted by the invitation to discuss the Western tradition of sacred painting. He looked down at Owen and wanted to put the Robin conundrum into Owen's steady hands – hands that had readily grasped his hips, hands that had done who knew what to the eminent Dr. Robbins – but did not know what words to employ. Owen had gone for commitment and fidelity and all their concomitant joys, and Harry's choice to sample every last thing on offer had long stood as a sort of joke between them; Harry could no more ask what he was missing than he could stoop now and kiss Owen.

"And you call _me_ Heretic," he said instead.

"Yes," Owen said, unashamed. 

"I think you just like watching me sashay."

"Yes, that must be it. It couldn't be that I needed to verify the type does not show from this side, or that it's imperative that you should be able to assimilate the information you're fed without hesitating."

That was new and unexpected. Harry's performance ought to make no difference to whomever Owen was seeking to impress, least of all Julian Robbins, who should have been thanking his lucky star that Owen had fallen headlong for him. "Why?" he asked, considering whether the glasses were a sort of application for doctoral work under Robbins, and Owen pushed him away with gentle hands.

"Please, Heretic," Owen said. "I'm asking for your help."

Knowing he was the only one Owen would think to ask was enough for Harry. He flew to the end of the aisle and returned much more sedately, all the while giving voice to the senseless death of "Strange Meeting." The words were lovely in his mouth but hard to keep track of when Owen, alive with the wonder of his own creation, was what he saw between them.

He startled when a knock sounded on the door; they weren't supposed to be in here, and explaining that they were working would give away Owen's secret. But Owen smiled and swung his lean length out of the chair to answer it, and Harry should not have been so surprised to see Dr. Robbins step into view, one hand already on the back of Owen's neck in a gesture that could be stretched to look platonic, even paternal. "Good . . . morning, sir," he said, checking his watch and realising that they'd worked through the dawn. 

Robbins smiled without interest or curiosity and spoke in that hearty voice that Harry always associated with disinterested small talk of the type his parents and their equally tedious friends liked to indulge in. "Hart, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir. History." Harry liked saying it like that, letting himself imply that his bond with Owen was backed up by a long history, beside which Robbins was a mere moment.

Robbins nodded, his hand still on Owen's neck, and eyed Harry up and down. "Have you a given name?"

Harry _hated_ him suddenly, standing there so self-assured with his prematurely silver hair swept elegantly back and his height beating even Owen's, though that might have been because Owen went all soft around him instead of standing up straight. Owen had better not ever have confided that he called him Heretic. "It's Harry," he lied without a flicker. "Have you come to see what Salt has made?" he asked, willing Robbins to see that Owen had let _him_ in on the secret ages ago.

"Indeed. He's confident enough to invite me to run some tests of my own." So that was what Owen had been typing – the poem _and_ an invitation to his lover to come and be astounded by his brilliance. Harry turned away to give them a moment of privacy, then wished he hadn't acknowledged his understanding of their relationship. He heard the soft sounds of intimately familiar conversation and tried to tune them out by running through as much as he could remember of the poem; he got stuck on _I am the enemy you killed, my friend_ , which had always made him shiver.

"Harry," he heard Owen say, "you haven't got anything on this morning, have you?"

Even if he could remember, what would it matter? "No." He followed Owen out of the Laboratory and down to the Cam, doubled vision rendering him unable to keep up until he ripped the spectacles off his face and could see, unimpeded, the long dark line of his friend. The punt they ended up in was the _Harry Lime_ , and Harry tried to settle down at that, reading it as a good sign.

Owen was too pretty a punter – not to mention too prone to motion-sickness when not active – to cede the pole without a fight and Harry was too relieved, after being so abruptly keyed up, to protest his own passivity. Owen steered them to the towpath quickly, then held out a hand for the spectacles. "What on earth is the range for these things?" Harry asked, amazed.

Owen flashed a grin down at him. "That's one of the tests." He arranged the glasses on his nose, and Harry sat up to analyse the changes that putting them on made to his face – Owen's saturnine features looked even more sharply etched when he was wearing them. "Ah, he's started," Owen said, pushing off again. His rhythm didn't falter even as Harry could see his eyes moving to read whatever it was Robbins was projecting there. Harry let his fingers drift into the water when Owen began reading aloud, all of it in languages Harry did not know but blushed to hear; whatever Robbins was typing, Owen's voice made it sound like sin. When it came time to turn back, Owen peeled the glasses off and laughed, bright and relaxed, with the sun behind him like it was content to be his personal spotlight.

Harry took the glasses back, just to see if they really could still be working this far from the Laboratory, and read the English words that seemed to fill up every last centimetre of the lenses. _You marvel. I'm going to swallow you whole, my beautiful boy._

*

Harry doesn't think he was sleeping, really; he is just sort of drifting off when Eggsy's voice reaches him. "Harry? Harryluv, y'alright?"

He shifts his head so that both eyes can see straight ahead. If he concentrates, he can combine the two differently coloured views into a single coherent image. He didn't have this problem under the fluorescent lights in the infirmary. He refuses to believe that the difference is not the lighting but the subject matter; his life has depended for years on his sharp attention to every detail of his environs, and surely he does not look at Eggsy that much more closely.

Eggsy's wide eyes are drinking up his face. "Why should I not be?" Harry asks.

"I dunno. Never done this before, have I, don' know what I'm s'posed to say." Eggsy must still be cold as the sweat on his skin dries, because his forearms are pressed tightly to his chest so his fists are just under his chin.

"Never had a lie-in with a lover?" he asks, though he can posit the answer well enough. Eggsy could not have felt secure of his own safety, with a stepfather so vicious and a mother so willing to allow the abuse to happen; when exactly would the boy have had a moment of peace, let alone luxurious leisure?

Eggsy's only amatory encounters – even his fumbling kisses – must have been stolen, furtive moments in less than romantic settings. If he's never lain abed, spent and satisfied, then he's never felt the dawning buzz of a second, stickier, filthier round building in his blood, his outspread limbs, his cock; Harry's already beginning to feel the faintest first pricklings of arousal after spending.

Both shades of pink he sees with his mismatched eyes come sharply into focus when Eggsy licks his lips. "Never had a lover."

There is a roaring in Harry's ears as all the air in the room is sucked away. Oh, he is a brute. 

That is guilt hammering away at him, that he thought that Eggsy had been playacting the shy young thing in his bed, that he'd revelled in it and thought only of despoiling that mock-virginity. No touch, no breath, no shiver was part of a studied repertoire, something other lovers had responded favourably to, but rather honestly what Eggsy's systems and instincts had told him to do. Eggsy had said _oh, oh, oh_ – and Harry had wanted those moans tattooed on his body for all the world to see – like Harry'd been taking him on a voyage of discovery instead of just fucking him further up the bed. Eggsy had been discovering himself, and Harry too, and Harry had amply demonstrated how little there was to treasure in him.

Underneath the guilt, Harry is still wretchedly exultant, that Eggsy is entirely his. He suspects he is not quite as self-excoriating as he means to be.

Eggsy had said he loved him, but Eggsy evidently loves a lot of people, and none of them – not Roxanne, not even Owen, of whom much might have been forgiven – has acted like a berserker on Viagra. He can only imagine the ache between Eggsy's legs right now, the mess in his throbbing arse, and resolves to pay whatever penance the boy exacts.

Looking at him now, though, the fat inches of his cock lying soft against his thigh, a dusky pink against a paler one, just makes Harry want him all the more.

He really is an animal that ought to be locked away. That visceral sense of triumph is not going away or even decorously diminishing. 

"Darling boy," he says. "I'm so sorry for my haste." That's one way to put it, the nicest way, but Eggsy is far more forgiving than he deserves. "May I make it up to you?"

They are still sharing a pillow, and one of Eggsy's forefingers rises from its fist to settle in the cleft of Harry's chin. "I ain't interested in a re-do." There can be no such thing, and if there were, he wouldn't waste it on a day in bed with Harry when there are greater wrongs to be righted; Harry can read a lot in Eggsy's tone of voice.

"May I offer you a better experience, then?" he offers, as mildly as he can. That much he can safely promise.

" _How?_ " Eggsy asks wonderingly, and Harry kisses him instead of laughing, exulting in Eggsy's naïve satisfaction at his prowess. He rolls onto his back so that Eggsy is above him and then stops directing them; this is Eggsy's turn to play now. But Eggsy's profound inexperience catches Harry off-guard and, unexpectedly, makes him feel virginal too; Eggsy doesn't know he isn't supposed to moan and shiver so vulnerably, and Harry finds himself responding just as artlessly. 

"Eggsy, darling, sweetheart, kiss me," he says, unable to stop his own words, looking up at Eggsy's innocent nakedness. "Please, love, please, just –" and Eggsy, unsure how to position himself, ends up with his elbows gracelessly planted by Harry's ears, so that his imploring eyes fill Harry's vision and his intertwined fingers are lost in Harry's hair. Eggsy's mouth, when he obliges, is as sweet as water, and Harry sinks gratefully into it.

He chokes on his own breath when Eggsy finally pulls their lips apart. "Oh, don't, love," he says when Eggsy roots into the wrinkled skin of his neck, the tell-tale sign of an old man that he hides daily with the upright collar of a proper shirt and the artistic knot of a Kingsman tie.

"So soft here," Eggsy breathes reverently, and Harry arches up helplessly, taking Eggsy's head between his hands just to feel the velvet of his hair as he strokes against the grain. Eggsy kisses his neck tenderly and makes his way down, stopping to lick thoughtfully at a nipple before inhaling at the thatch of chest hair that has gone half silver and wiry. "And here," Eggsy says. "You smell like . . . I don' even know what, but it's good." Eggsy noses at the placket of his shirt, nudging it away. "More."

Harry shrugs and wriggles like a caterpillar in order to get the shirt to fall off his shoulders, then allows Eggsy to tug at the sleeves to pull the damn thing entirely free. "Yes, Harry," Eggsy says, hands compulsively returning to the sides of his neck and smoothing along his skin to cup his shoulders. There is nothing erotic about the repeated motion, but Harry is starting to understand that the magic lies with the magician and not the spell; Eggsy has won him over completely.

"Sweetheart," he begs, and Eggsy, still kneeling over him, looks so fucking pleased at the endearment that Harry's wilful cock stiffens up a little more.

"Yeah. What you want, Harry?" The boy's voice is a little hoarser now, now that he's seeing the effect he can have.

"Your turn," Harry protests, tipping his head back when Eggsy mouths again at his throat.

"What would you do, if you c'd do anything?"

Harry closes his eyes, giving himself up for lost as the words spill out. "I'd cut my thighs to ribbons on your jaw, I'd set you on my hips to ride me and not let you go, I'd clutch that round backside like it's my lifeline, I'd swallow you down for days."

Eggsy's gone still above him, and when Harry peeks up at him, his eyes kindle and he dives for Harry's pants and trousers, still clinging uselessly to his thighs and arse. Eggsy unashamedly noses his way in and breathes in the scent at the very root of him while peeling the unwanted clothes away, and Harry's cock keeps rising. He will do something drastic if Eggsy's sweetly damp mouth touches him there.

Instead, Eggsy arches up and links their fingers together, bringing all four hands to the bed above Harry's head. Harry nuzzles Eggsy's armpit – his eye has been caught on the soft tufts of Eggsy's axillary hair every time he rewatches the beginning of the water test – and breathes deeply to catch the fragrances of sweat and soap and deodorant. He can feel, against his belly, Eggsy's cock straining. "Harry," Eggsy moans, and drops his head down for another kiss, not nearly as precise as before, just smearing his mouth against Harry's.

Harry has never felt this good before, this cracked open. It does not matter that he cannot even kiss his boy and has to content himself with letting their tongues catch haphazardly. 

But Eggsy is starting to rock against him, seeking friction, and Harry remembers – finally, his elusive sense of shame appears when it was badly wanted before – that this time he needs to prepare him properly. He lubes his fingers and patiently, penitently traces Eggsy's fluttering hole with one. Eggsy whines until the fingertip dips in, then releases a guttural moan and presses his chest to Harry's. Harry struggles to remember what has to happen next, cannot find the word _scissor_ until his two fingers are already making the motion inside the hot, soaked clutch of Eggsy's body, a third finger seeking heat joining the others before he knows it and making Eggsy arch back up.

Eggsy is dangerously boneless now, swaying on top of him, but he moves willingly as Harry coaxes; Harry holds his prick steady to let Eggsy sink ponderously down. "Oh, love," he says before Eggsy's even fully seated, and Eggsy teeters, falling forward before he catches himself with his hands on the bed just above Harry's shoulders.

"Oh, love," Eggsy murmurs back, taking his time to adjust to the penetration. Moving his hands like Harry's a climbing wall with handholds, a little at a time, Eggsy works his way back to sitting upright, and Harry brings his knees up to brace him. 

Eggsy rocks languorously, not even rising and falling, not yet, and _this_ is the first time Harry should have given his lovely boy, so he stays still while he goes quietly insane from the heat. Eggsy is so tight around him that he feels like his cock will be rifled like a spent bullet when they're done.

Eggsy is humming, Harry realises, when at last the boy shifts and drops immediately back down as if it were an accidental movement. Harry permits himself one squeeze of that magnificently lush arse before he settles his hands on Eggsy's hips and coaxes him into rising and slamming his weight down. His feet braced against the bed, Harry thrusts at the same time, and Eggsy slurs his name like he's blacking-out drunk. "Yes, darling," Harry manages to say, then loses the thread when the soldier on top of him remembers every endurance drill he's run and starts bouncing in earnest.

Eggsy needs to come first this time, and when Eggsy's punishing rhythm at long last falters, Harry is there to rake his hand across Eggsy's cock. Eggsy's come is sticking to Harry's chest when Harry lets go. His own orgasm feels like blind man's bluff, like he's been blindfolded and spun until he's dizzy.

"Better," Eggsy allows, minutes – hours – later, speaking into the hollow of Harry's throat, apparently a favourite spot despite all of Harry's protests. Harry is content to lie with Eggsy in his arms until the end of the world.

*

What he gets is an hour of Eggsy, not in the least self-conscious, draped like an odalisque on top of him. It is infinitely satisfying to feel so thoroughly worn out and know his darling boy, newly initiated in the ways of love, is, despite his youthful reserves of energy, equally exhausted. 

He loses the feeling of justifiable smugness when Eggsy takes a look at the carriage clock on the bedside table and rolls right off him, saying, "We gotta get ready. Meeting of the knights at HQ."

"What?" Harry protests as Eggsy swings his legs over the side of the bed and strolls, naked and unashamed, to the ensuite. Harry sinks back into the bed with an annoyed huff that shifts into disgust when he registers the wetness under his shoulder. He has to remember condoms next time, or else he'll be forever changing the sheets.

What is he doing? Eggsy, freshly fucked, is in the next room, and he's fretting about his chores. He hears a yelp from the bathroom.

"What is it?" he calls, doing his damnedest to suppress a smirk though no one can see him. The boy is bound to be sore.

He can hear the laugh in Eggsy's voice when it drifts back to him, though it is distorted by the sound of rushing water. "Trust you to pamper your own arse. How many sprays you need in a single shower, mate?"

Confused, he doesn't respond. Why is Eggsy acting like he's never used the shower here before? Has Eggsy kept himself to the guest bedroom and guest bath all this time, or is it an oblique – _very_ oblique – invitation to join him? Eggsy might think shower sex sounds fantastic, but Harry's definitely not up for slipping and breaking anything, especially not after he's just been released from the hell that is the Kingsman infirmary. He stands and stretches, just to affirm his own fitness, and fetches clean sheets from the dresser.

He's plumping a newly covered pillow when Eggsy returns, damp and sparkling, making a round of the room to retrieve the clothes Harry ripped off him earlier. Eggsy drops the pants, jeans, shirt, and hoodie on the bed and his towel to the floor. A not insignificant part of Harry's brain is noting that his soap smells differently, but still lovely, on Eggsy's skin rather than his, but he only says, "You might want to wear a suit," as all that amber-scented skin is covered; Eggsy needn't make it too easy for the pillocks at the Round Table – he knows who they are – to dismiss him as unworthy by showing up in anything less than proper Kingsman kit.

"Ain't got time for all that. Chop-chop, into the shower with you," Eggsy says while chivvying Harry toward the bathroom. "I'm calling Raf to pick us up in ten minutes, right?" Harry goes, unaccustomed to such unnecessary haste and still a little peeved at the interruption of their first morning together.

Irritatingly, after whisking him into the car, Eggsy spends the entire taxi ride discussing something called _Fury Road_ with Rafael instead of allowing Harry to murmur endearments in his ear. They're in a compartment of the bullet train before Harry can so much as say, "Darling boy."

Eggsy cuts him off immediately. "Ain't a boy," he protests, though Harry notes that the tips of his trainers just barely reach the floor, which is making him feel far more predatory than is proper.

"You did not protest earlier –"

"Didn't hear half o' whatever shite you was prob'ly spouting, since you had me outta my mind. But I ain't a boy, so don' be creepy."

He's a little offended. Eggsy must be able to read it on his face, because he smiles and darts in for a kiss that's more of a cheek nuzzle than anything else. "I liked what I did hear, though – all the love and sweetheart and darlin' stuff."

"Oh, that meets with your approval? All of that 'stuff'?"

Eggsy just laughs in his face, and Harry hauls him in for a better kiss. Eggsy makes a pleased sound into his mouth and Harry savours him until the shuttle slows to a halt. "That allowed, then? Figured a gennelman wouldn't use his tongue like that outside the bedroom."

Harry's not even going to dignify that with a response. "Come along, darling." It feels preposterously good to walk into the meeting room side-by-side with Eggsy, Galahad and Gaheris perfectly in step.

Caradoc comes in three minutes later, filling the only empty seat, and Arthur calls the meeting to order. "There is no set agenda for this meeting; I simply wished to gather everyone, as it is the first occasion in quite some time that every active knight is in England and fit for duty." That would explain why Owen is missing; as Merlin, he has demands on his time that will not allow him to take part in a purely social affair. "So, a toast." Arthur begins pouring out snifters of brandy, only to run out after only a few of them hold a finger each; the decanter generally holds enough liquor for about four knights, the usual number who attend the meetings in person.

There is a silence as they all watch their new leader. Harry can feel his eyebrows creeping up in response to the faux pas. Arthur's oval face is set in its usual serious lines as he sets the empty decanter gently down. Abruptly, he covers his face with his hand and _giggles_.

Eggsy is the first to join in, but soon every Kingsman is braying his own particular laugh, and the place sounds like a madhouse.

Arthur, for some reason, seems to believe he will be entirely intelligible even when he keeps interrupting himself with snorts of laughter. By virtue of sitting in Galahad's seat, closest to Arthur's, Harry is able to make out each word; he rather doubts anyone else can. "What are we doing? These traditions and ceremonies are ridiculous. It's nearly thirty degrees out, and we've got a fire going for our meeting! Nobody even likes this brandy. All of the brandy we stock is shit, for some reason; we'd be better off drinking straight vinegar. Actually, I'd kill for a cuppa."

"Builder's and biscuits," Eggsy agrees from across the table, then seems to recollect himself and digs an elbow into Roxanne's ribs. "Or maybe masala chai?"

"Eggsy –" she says in a tone that promises retribution, and Harry is too pleased that she's not sounding affectionate to be suitably worried about Eggsy's future. She darts a look at Arthur. "Sorry, _Gaheris_. Don't start."

"No need for formality when we're all together," Arthur says, wiping his streaming eyes. "It's been too long since I heard my real name."

"Nah, bruv, don't be gettin' rid o' the code names!" Eggsy pleads. "I been waitin' to split a Chinese takeaway with you lot and doin' the trick with the fortune cookies."

Roxanne, for some reason, looks darkly at _him_ , as if he has been goading Eggsy on. Harry makes a gesture of complete innocence. "What trick?" she asks suspiciously.

"Y'know, when you read a fortune, you add _in bed_ to the end, only we'd get to say _in Bedivere_." Bedivere guffaws and Eggsy shoots him a wink, easily ignoring Bors, who mutters something about immaturity. Simon laughs again, puffing Eggsy up, but Harry can only sit back, disgruntled that his own afternoon in bed – who knows how many times he could have made Eggsy keen and come – was interrupted for this utterly pointless meeting. Perhaps he should take it as a timely warning; if that remark is a sample of Eggsy's sense of humour, he will have to keep gags around the house just to buy himself some peace.

The other knights are chatting amongst themselves now, none in a particular hurry to leave. Roxanne is looking at Eggsy and there's a faint smile on her face as if she's being charmed against her will. Harry sees Simon look at her and Eggsy and make an effort to sober up. "Thank you, Gaheris, for your wit and spirit. You and Lancelot are the reason we're able to meet like this today."

Inappropriate he might well be, but Eggsy is ever gracious. "Merlin, too," he says, and that reminds Harry that he needs to find out just what happened with Valentine, his would-be killer.

"Merlin, too," Arthur agrees. He raises his voice, effortlessly regaining everyone's attention. "Knights," he says, "as Arthur, I thank you for your service and mourn with you the losses you have suffered." Harry thinks that they have been lucky in their Arthur; Simon has found words and emotions Chester would never even have sought.

However much those words were needed, they have turned the mood of the room inescapably solemn. Roxanne murmurs something and reaches out to hold Simon's hand and Eggsy, his face suddenly pensive, nods and closes his eyes. Harry waits, but Eggsy doesn't open his eyes or speak aloud, and Harry . . . feels, ludicrously, _hurt_ , that Eggsy has names to think of at a moment of remembrance, that Eggsy hasn't told him who else owns pieces of a heart that Harry has been assured is his.

*

"Merlin," he says, sweeping into his domain, only Owen isn't there. His minions, however, are, and it is Miranda who says, "Was that Galahad I saw coming into HQ _on time_ for a meeting? What a brave new world we're living in!" Miranda has always enjoyed testing others' knowledge by alluding to his namesake character, and Harry has found him beyond tedious for nearly as long as he's known him.

Harry smiles his most cuttingly sardonic smile at him, which Miranda deflects like it's a bullet and he's garbed in a Kingsman suit. "Where is Merlin?" he asks, faultlessly polite as befits a knight.

"Working," Viola says, as if that's not the correct answer virtually all the time. "But he ought to take a break in the next hour," she relents.

"Perhaps you could help me instead," he tries, this time with an attempt at a charming smile.

She blinks, taken aback, and Harry's smile grows a bit more genuine at the proof that he hasn't lost his touch entirely, even if he is hung up on one stubborn, slippery boy. "Perhaps," she allows warily. "What do you need?"

He has no idea how reliable any lists of the dead might be or how much of the world's infrastructure might have been knocked out by the madness caused by Valentine's SIM cards. He doesn't even know how long the rage lasted, if it was as effective on everyone as it had been on him, or if certain areas of the globe were more devastated than others. All he can do is watch what did happen, rather than continuing to speculate. "Do you have any footage of Merlin on V-Day?" That was what Eggsy had called it, the one time he spoke of it in Harry's hearing.

Viola looks him up and down, and Harry has no idea how to appear more trustworthy in her eyes; if knowing that Galahad is Merlin's favourite isn't enough for her, what will be? "I'd say it's him you should be asking, but he thought you'd ask for it sooner, so it's all wrapped up for you." She turns to type at her workstation, speaking as her fingers fly. "There, it's ready for you on your home terminal."

"Thank you," he says. Miranda is still eyeing him and Viola has dismissed him from her consideration, but Falstaff slips after him and catches him in the corridor.

"You might want to stop and get a cuppa on your way out," Falstaff says, and with that kind of a broad hint, he'd have to be an idiot not to do as directed.

He's not normally so aware of the refectory's acoustics, but the day has been full of unexpected events, and he supposes he's a little on edge. The sound of Roxanne's voice is nearly enough to make him turn around and seek Eggsy instead of Owen. Then he hears her say, "This is Gaheris, less formally known as Eggsy."

"Eggsy?" a lilting voice he cannot place says. "Do you – is the name Benedict really so bad?"

Eggsy laughs. "My name ain't Benedict, love. Good guess, though."

Roxanne says, "You know, Eggs, you never told me how you ended up with that nickname." Harry, hearing her say _Eggs_ , picks up his pace and turns the corner to find Eggsy sitting opposite Roxanne and a woman of about their age. All three have steaming cups of tea in front of them and the women's clasped hands rest on the table, their contrasting skin tones making for a pleasing pattern.

Eggsy lights up at the sight of him. "Will do, if you can guess how my man Eminem here got his."

"Eminem?" Roxanne says in pure disbelief and Harry, startled into meeting her eyes, cannot disguise how surprised he is as well. Eggsy, meanwhile, has slipped an arm around his waist and is pulling him down into the empty chair.

"Eminem," Eggsy repeats with evident satisfaction. "Cause his legs is –"

"Eight mile long?" guesses Roxanne's paramour. She has evidently taken Eggsy's measure without difficulty.

"Anjali!" Eggsy crows delightedly, high-fiving her. "Nah, gotta come up with one for you now. What works – Anj, righ'? Most people call you Anj? I'ma call you Funjali. Roxypet, you picked a winner." Roxanne smirks.

Harry has rarely felt older or more out of place than he does at this display of youth and vivacity. Aware that he's embodying a stereotype cherished by Americans, he seeks comfort in tea; at least it's stolen tea, Eggsy's nice hot cuppa, and he keeps his little finger properly down. The taste of exquisitely brewed masala chai with milk and cane sugar fills his mouth. Remembering Eggsy's remark at the meeting, he guesses that Anjali, who's wearing the hound's-tooth trousers of a chef, made the tea.

He holds out his hand. Anjali's grip is warm and firm, and her face is striking without being pretty; he cannot fault Roxanne's taste even if Anjali's talent and appeal must be weighed against the dreadful sense of humour that makes her kin to Eggsy. "I'm Harry Hart, sometimes called Galahad." He can hear Eggsy taking a breath and continues as if there were no possibility of being contradicted. " _No one_ has ever called me 'Eminem.'" 

Eggsy, the shameless imp, just laughs and steals back his chai. Harry wants desperately to kiss him just now, when his lips are flushed warm from tea, but cannot; all he can do is gaze at his boy, brown-sugar hair and berry-pink lips, and marvel. Eggsy looks up at him then, eyes catching for a long moment before he blinks.

"If you're trying to build the suspense . . ." Roxanne says dryly.

"Nah," Eggsy says, easily snapping back to the conversation. "Righ', firs' thing you gotta know, my mum's hilarious. Like, proper hilarious." Harry, deprived of tea and therefore something to do with his hands, inadvertently looks across at Roxanne, who's apparently straining every muscle not to shoot down Eggsy's praise of his mother. Having not expected an ally in his position that Michelle is undeserving of Eggsy's devotion, he smiles genuinely at Roxanne, disappointed when she starts guiltily and leans forward to demonstrate how much attention she's paying to the story. He listens as well, because the story is unknown to him too.

"So my dad comes home on leave before startin' his specialist trainin' and Mum's there, squirmin' and grinnin' and he's thinkin' that she jus' likes the look of the Commando uniform when she whispers in his ear that she's got a surprise for him. A surprise 'bout the size of an egg. An' she's nodding at him and makin' little gestures like she's holdin' an egg, and he couldn' figure if she was offerin' him breakfast or braggin' that she'd learnt to juggle –"

"Or was hinting at an exciting new sex toy," Roxanne offers dryly, and Eggsy goes wide-eyed at the risqué interruption before frowning at her and focusing his attention on Anjali, who's listening demurely, not even cracking a smile at Roxanne's joke.

"An' when she finally quit talkin' with her hands, she spilled that she was expectin' me, and that the doc had said that at that point I'da been no bigger'n an egg. So, I came out months later and due to some colossally good drugs she called me Gary, but Dad knew enough to call me Eggsy righ' from the start."

"That sounds like Lee," Owen – materialising _finally_ – says from behind him, and when Harry turns to face him, Owen's wearing his Merlin face and examining Harry's new eye rather minutely. "Eggsy, Roxy," Owen says, not looking away, "you're heading to Krakow in the morning. Briefing packets and necessary materials will be on the jet, as will you be at eight hundred hours. Ms. Raman, always a pleasure. Harry, a word?"

"Certainly. Eggsy, I'll meet you by the shuttle?"

Eggsy looks surprised but nods before getting back to planning what is apparently going to be an epic movie night, complete with Cornettos, with Roxanne and Anjali once the Krakow mission is over. Harry follows Owen out of the refectory and then takes the lead, guiding them both to the small office that's nearly always empty. He wonders if the silver coffee service that's gleaming on the table has ever seen actual use, or if it exists merely to be polished weekly. He used to like to have his conversations with Chester here, when he could manage it, because the distorted reflections of Chester's stuffy face in the bulbous silver belly of the coffeepot were far more amusing than anything else to come out of those meetings.

"How much longer is Eggsy's probationary period to last?" he asks Owen. "I don't recall James or the others being put through anything similar." 

Owen is frowning, half at him and half at his tablet screen. "What probation?"

"You keep pairing him up with Lancelot, and I have seen very few missions that genuinely required two knights." He does not like how natural it seems to be for everyone to yoke the two youngest knights together, or how easily and happily they accommodate such arrangements; still, he is only being truthful when he says such joint missions were never particularly frequent. "He can ride a bicycle without stabilisers."

Owen gives him a look. "Gaheris and Lancelot are both full agents, highly capable knights, and as expected each has completed individual missions. They are unusual only in that they trained together for so long in their trials and then both ascended to the table; that bond means they work well together, and there have been many past missions in which a male/female couple would have allayed the suspicion raised by a single male agent. Kingsman – Arthur and I – are taking advantage of the existing relationship and the new circumstance of having a female knight, not forcing them into a partnership they find distasteful." Harry suddenly remembers that Owen was there when he first saw Eggsy and Roxanne kiss affectionately, and how the sight had goaded him into wounding the boy enough for the girl to protest. Owen's voice doesn't change to indicate he's had a sudden revelation; he's known all along why Harry is protesting. "I believed meeting the object of Roxy's affections and knowing intimately how loyal Eggsy is would have obviated your jealousy." Harry says nothing. "Harry." Still he maintains his silence, because Owen is right and he should know better. Eggsy had said, unprompted, that he loved him. "Heretic."

"Yes." He looks up and manages a smile. "I know." Eggsy had been in his arms just this morning, untouched but willing, ardent and enraptured. Oh, but it is a mistake to be thinking of Eggsy's bewitching innocence when Owen is sitting opposite him – Owen, who must have been just as shy and brave when Julian Robbins was conquering his heart and laying waste to all of his defences; Owen, who was so wrecked from the fallout that he's guarded himself so closely as to be untouched ever since. It weighs on Harry suddenly, the responsibility he's fucked his way into: he is the man by whom Eggsy will measure love and sex for the rest of his life. He is self-aware enough to know he is entirely capable of fucking it all up quite colossally.

Owen has never had any trouble reading him, and proves it again. "Eggsy confessed, and ye pounced."

"Yes." At least Owen's words make it sound a little less brutal while making it clear he knew who the aggressor had been.

"You'll be good to him." Harry was always the dimmer one, he's known it since the time he first understood the meteoric reality of Owen, but it's brought home to him anew when he can't tell if that's a statement, a command, or a question; all that's clear is that Owen loves Eggsy too. 

Between winning over Owen and bonding with Anjali and establishing a fellowship with Arthur, it's seeming more and more implausible that no one had ever taken any romantic interest in Eggsy. It's equally unlikely that Dean Baker had failed to realise what a potential gold mine he had in his stepson, whose beauty he must have seen as saleable, given the ease with which his thugs had voiced the idea of Eggsy's being a rentboy. Had Eggsy's confession that he'd never had a lover simply meant that he'd never _chosen_ who would be in his bed, that it was the pleasure of the act and not the mechanics that had been new to him?

He wonders if Owen knows. He has long grown accustomed to the idea that Owen knows everything.

"Galahad," Owen says, fully in Merlin mode, "I needed to speak to you about your own readiness for a mission. There's a situation developing in Mali and your French should be more than adequate. You would leave in three days."

"Certainly," he says again, straightening his spine when he realises how obvious his doubt must be.

"Look at me," Owen asks, making it a friend's request rather than a medical mandate. Eggsy would no doubt have put on a Dracula accent and said something about looking deep into his eyes, and while Owen does no such thing, Harry knows that neither one of them would allow him into the field at anything less than his best. It is odd to have two people willing to put him first, two men who know him and love him anyway.

"The eye is fine. Better than fine. No issues." Two people who will only worry if he reports every twinge or anomaly when they have better things to consider. The colour discrepancy is too minor to be worth noting.

"Good to hear, Galahad." 

*

Eggsy is waiting by the window overlooking the hangar, ankles casually crossed, and talking on his mobile. His smile and the melodic tone of his voice make it clear he's talking to his sister – Harry recalls that he's never once heard Eggsy refer to Daisy as his half-sister, but he can't determine if that's because he won't give Baker the credit for siring her or because he thinks of her as wholly his to love and protect. "See you soon, ducks. Phone to Mummy?"

Eggsy still hasn't seen him, so Harry allows himself a grimace at the thought of returning home to Michelle and her daughter. He wonders where they'd been this morning, since Eggsy had got enough notice from his doctor to clear them out, and how long he can stretch that respite out.

"Heya, Mum. Should be home in an hour, give or take. Then off in the morning. Poland, yeah, me an' Rox." Harry's noise of protest – what is Eggsy doing, letting a civilian in on the location and timing of his next Kingsman mission? – is enough to make the boy look over and aim a smile his way. "Love you, bye." He disconnects the call and pushes off from the wall.

"Wotcher, Harry," Eggsy says, and Harry, further exasperated, wonders if everything Eggsy says must be an allusion to some pop-culture ephemera or uttered in that accent that Eggsy knows very well how to shed.

"Eggsy," he begins, watching as the boy's hopefully arched brows flatten at his tone, "your mother is not a Kingsman."

"I'm aware, thanks."

"Have you no sense of discretion? She –" He cuts himself off because Eggsy looks like he's just been walloped across the face. By him, by his hand, and Harry cannot bear the sight of Eggsy looking so betrayed, still less the taut, hurt profile with which he's presented when Eggsy turns his head away. "I understand that it's hard for you not to tell her everything, but what are you going to tell her two tailors need to do in Poland?"

Eggsy thins his lips and presses his hand to the scanner to summon the bullet train. Harry gets the sense that Eggsy is just barely holding on to his temper, and though this is a matter of the utmost importance, he's willing to push – better the explosion should be here, where they have relative privacy, than at home, where Michelle and Daisy will be watching – and have it resolved so that he can have Eggsy in his bed again tonight. "Dear b–"

This time it's Eggsy who cuts him off. "Get off your fuckin' high horse, Harry," he blazes. "She's earned the right to know – she shoulda been told when Dad died. Merlin agrees wi' me. _Arthur_ agrees wi' me. So you can fuck off."

The bullet train arrives and the compartment opens silently. Eggsy climbs in and Harry follows, watching the boy scowl at him. "This don' look like you fuckin' off."

"I don't turn tail and run, and I don't take orders from you." Eggsy's face floods with hurt, and Harry does not understand why he always has to push that step too far. "Dearest, I apologise; that was uncalled for. I simply want to be home as much as you do, and I thought travelling together would make the hour pass most enjoyably." He certainly had appreciated Eggsy's sweet mouth on the ride in, and he is pleased by how delicately he's invited a return engagement while avoiding the topic of Eggsy's disastrous mother.

Only, of course, Eggsy won't let it go. "I ain't lettin' her get sold a fuckin' load o' goods again. An' she sees me when I get hurt, knows what to do for bruises." There's a whole ugly story there in Eggsy's chosen words, the way his firm lips turn down. His bright eyes are glittering like a bird of prey's. "Arthur said half the knights got families, someone to come home to, an' I was no different just 'cause I got a mum 'stead o' a wife."

Arthur was exaggerating then, or Eggsy is now, but making that point will get him nowhere. "You have me, darling," he points out, not quite kindly. It is fitting that they share a mews house, where the steeds and hunting birds of warriors were kept of old – he the horse's arse that Roxanne called him and Eggsy as fierce as a falcon in defending his family.

Eggsy snorts. "Yeah, 'cause countin' on hookin' up wi' a bloke you think at first is dead, then unlikely to wake up as 'imself from his second coma of the year, is a solid plan."

What are the connotations of _hooking up_? It sounds far too casual for cohabitation, the space Eggsy has carved out of the mews house for his mother and sister. "What?"

Eggsy takes out his mobile and starts typing on it. "You'd better call Stephen," is all he says, nimbly avoiding the topic of their relationship.

"Do you have an errand to run?" Harry asks, trying to make sense of Eggsy's direction.

"I'm goin' home," Eggsy says, surprised into putting down the phone. "Ain't you?"

"Yes."

"So." Eggsy shrugs as if the matter is closed. His mobile chimes, and the boy glances at the message and nods.

Eggsy doesn't look upset still, though maybe just a little touchy, and Harry does not want to set him off again. "I don't follow," he admits after a pause. 

"You go to your home an' –" Eggsy breaks off. "Oh, didja think I'd just taken over your house like a virus?" There's really no graceful way to admit that that's precisely what he thought, and as Harry is scrambling, the last of the tension stiffening Eggsy's shoulders drains away. "Dumpin' my mum and baby sister in a house decorated with dead an' ugly things? Will I fuck." Eggsy laughs, a sound Harry has heard in so many contexts today that his mind gives up on classifying it and just lets his heart thump madly in response. "Arthur 'n' Merlin were real gents, gave me a house o' my own for the three of us."

He is not going to dampen the mood by asking how Eggsy had got rid of Baker. "Where are you situated?"

"Hesper Mews. Posh as fuck." There's gratitude in Eggsy's voice, for Simon and Owen who had made the time to care for Eggsy so that he could provide for his family, even with so much else going on in the world. Harry ruthlessly quashes the terrible voice inside him that jealously insists that he would have demonstrated equal largesse, had he only been conscious, and that Eggsy should have waited for his awakening. And the other, equally shameful voice that suggests that Eggsy should pay his family but a flying visit and then dash the half mile to Stanhope Mews and end the night in Harry's bed. "Harry. Hey, Harry."

"Yes?" he says once he hears Eggsy's attempt to catch his attention.

"Raf won' mind droppin' you off first. Your place is pretty close to mine." Eggsy smiles sweetly at him, and Harry, seeing that all is forgiven – Eggsy really makes himself appallingly vulnerable with his tenderness – drinks his darling boy in with greedy eyes.

*

Alone in his unlit house, Harry at last explores; he'd been too busy this morning feasting on Eggsy to have eyes for anything but him, and after all of that morning glory he'd been rushed down the stairs and out the door to head to HQ. 

The kitchen is sterile and all of his belongings are in their proper places, without any jammy fingerprints or smudges. Eggsy had only been here twice before today, so it was nonsensical to have expected him to feel sentimental about the place, however he feels about Harry.

He's not usually ready to admit the virtues of any criticisms of what's his, but as he putters around his kitchen making tea, laying out biscuits, and pouring himself a good stiff drink, he tries to take in the house with fresh eyes. Alright, the downstairs loo is rather a horror show, with so many specimens on the walls that Owen had been right to call it "a diorama of biblical plagues." And the art is remarkably poor, half of them pieces he had bought just to fill the walls because he'd always liked the look of paintings of galleries – the Samuel Morse _Gallery of the Louvre_ is a particular favourite, and the Dutch have always had a rather strong line in such things – and the other half he'd inherited from his parents, who'd had appalling taste.

It is emphatically not a child-friendly space. He can understand why Eggsy would not have wanted to raise Daisy here. But it is entirely his, and the master bedroom is his particular sanctuary, and the sights and sounds of Eggsy's coming apart under him have already become an added layer of warmth there. Nothing needs to change after all, he assures himself as he pours the boiling water to steep the tea. Though he does need to do a proper shop, as all of the biscuits on the plate are stale.

He carries the tea tray up to his study and sets it on the polished wood of his desk. Eggsy's unexpected defection tonight has at least granted him solitude, and he plans to make use of it by watching Merlin's feed from V-Day. Booting up the laptop and logging on, he clicks the file Viola had sent over. It seems to be unedited, judging by the steady clock in the corner, though it starts abruptly with a view of Valentine's countdown on a mobile-phone screen. Merlin brings the phone down and Harry's startled to see Roxanne aiming her Kingsman-issued pistol at Eggsy; this must have been mere hours after she earned the Lancelot title, and she already was turning her back on Eggsy. He wants to know how she made it up to Eggsy, how easy it was to earn his forgiveness, because Harry has a feeling he'll need that information at some point in the near future if he goes on as he's begun. 

Harry watches, tea forgotten, as Merlin rallies the two youngest Kingsmen, gets them on a jet, and outlines his plan to stop Valentine's signal by disabling one of the satellites in the chain; Owen always was able to toggle easily between details and the big picture, and even in his grief and confusion he is pragmatic and confident, imbuing Roxanne and Eggsy with the same qualities. Merlin is studying one of the chips – Harry realises suddenly that it must have been Chester King's, recalling that Eggsy had sidestepped death at his hands – with calipers and a magnifying glass, putting it aside when Eggsy asks. The two of them send Roxanne off, Merlin briskly and Eggsy sweetly, and prepare for their own parts. Merlin is skipping light-footedly into Valentine's systems when he turns to look at Eggsy, newly dressed in the suit Harry had made him. The navy of Eggsy's suit has a lighter and narrower pinstripe than Harry wears, but the identical tie and shirt make this outfit a mirror for the one Harry had on the day he lifted Eggsy from Holborn Station; seeing the sleek wonder of his boy in a suit Harry had designed for sentimental reasons makes him freshly aware of how long he's wanted to claim ownership of Eggsy – all that brilliance, all that nerve, all that beauty.

The suit stands Eggsy in good stead, stiffening his spine and allowing him to masquerade as Chester, then protecting him from all of the bullets fired by Valentine's crack security team. Throughout it all, Owen is guiding the boy so smoothly that it's as if they've been paired up for decades, like Harry was just keeping the seat of Kingsman's best knight warm for Eggsy. It stings a little, watching on Merlin's screen as Eggsy twists balletically, powerfully; he knows he'll never be so lissom or elastic again. For all his solidity, the boy is remarkably quick and canny. Eggsy fights his way back to the plane, only to learn he has to go back out to take on Valentine himself. 

Harry sits back and gulps his whisky, watching the video while he tries to think through all of its implications. Owen had trusted Eggsy on that fateful day, even after Eggsy failed the dog test and killed Arthur, and the two of them had worked in synchrony, point and counterpoint, to save the world. Owen treated Eggsy as an equal – even when the boy said he was fucked and then came up with the one idea guaranteed to introduce more chaos into the mix – and his faith proved justified when between them they managed to keep Valentine's signal to less than five minutes' reign. Five minutes in which, as Owen said, the world went to shit, but Harry knows how much worse it could have been. 

Eggsy is right in that he's not a boy; he's a man. More than that: he's Owen's equal and therefore Harry's superior.

It's an unexpected shock when he hears Owen tell Eggsy, "Harry would be proud of you," but it is frankly devastating when he hears Eggsy tell Valentine, "This ain't that kind of movie," because that means he heard Valentine's taunt outside the Kentucky church, must have witnessed the carnage Harry inflicted, had to live with the image of Harry bloodthirsty and implacable. How could Eggsy have forgiven him that insanity, enough to proclaim his love? The tumbler slips out of Harry's grip as the video ends. 

He closes his eyes and tries to think. So now he knows what Eggsy and Owen did on that fateful day. He still doesn't know what happened to the rest of the world in those five minutes, but it's time he found out.

*

He's fully prepped for the Mali mission, which involves nothing more strenuous than posing as an arrogant British national with French roots who's eager to broker arms deals that will allow combatants to get around the precarious peace accord, so he spends his time researching V-Day. There's almost too much information, a hodgepodge of imperfect first-hand accounts and scholarly summaries of statistics. Humanity has advanced – or descended – far indeed if it was able to wipe out twenty percent of the global urban population in just five minutes. Another fifteen percent followed in the week after, mostly the injured tipping over into death and those who took their own lives as penance. 

He read History at university, has discussed with great authority wars and plagues and the wiping out of generations and towns, but his mind cannot cope with the scale of what Valentine had done. Harry thinks back to Arthur's meeting, the way every face around the table had shaded with grief when words of remembrance were spoken; he is probably the only person he knows who has lost no one. Even Owen, whom he's accustomed to thinking of as quite as solitary as he, has lost knights, lads that he trained and encouraged and prepared – the former Gaheris to treachery proposed by Chester Bloody King, yes, but Tristan and Kay to those five wretched minutes.

He finds that he needs, badly, to see Owen, be touched by Owen since he cannot reach out and clap a hand to his best friend's back or fold him in his arms, however tenderly the gesture is meant. 

Owen is not handling the mission in Krakow – that honour is Viola's this time, as her cast-iron stomach can handle the jitteriness of the earring-camera – but he catches Harry standing behind Viola, the better to watch Lancelot and Gaheris charm all of the bright young things, the bright young deadly things, in their circle simply by looking so besotted with each other. It is evidently impossible for any woman in the group to remain discreet and suspicious when Lancelot is confiding exactly how swooningly romantic Gaheris had been when he proposed; no man can keep from feeling lusty and envious camaraderie when Gaheris says he picked the rock on her finger based on how good she'd look wearing nothing but that ring. Harry is not sure how much longer he can watch the two of them play honeypot for each other, and that is when Owen finds him and slings a companionable arm around his shoulders, drawing him away from youth calling to youth on the monitor.

"He said he loves you," Owen reminds him. Harry nods, thinking, _but the one he trusts is you_ ; he shouldn't feel slighted by this further proof of Eggsy's intelligence, not when he has seen how that trust saved the world.

*

Sat in the Seeley, working diligently on his essay, Harry was aware that he was in fact crushingly bored. He was used now to having at least two calls on his attention at any given time, thanks to Owen's spectacles, which he wore most days, enjoying the sporadic bursts of words that popped up whenever Owen had a free moment or a burning thought to share. The glasses were with Owen just then, as he was explaining all of the latest tweaks to Dr. Robbins. And Harry was stuck researching the ramifications of the Local Government Act creating parish councils. He'd not yet managed a single meeting of the minds with his tutor – they mostly talked past each other and found little common ground in the fertile field of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British history – but he was already in his final year and was aiming for a First mostly because he knew he was eminently capable of achieving it, and partly to silence his parents, who bored him to tears.

They had never seemed particularly interested in each other, either, and yet for some reason they kept interrupting his leisurely Sundays with teas that he had to navigate with him on one side of the table and the pair of them on the other, finishing each other's scolding sentences. It did not seem to matter whether the topic was the eligibility of various young ladies to become the next Mrs. Hart or the likelihood that he would have to settle for a Second, because the chorus was always his imminent failure. All spoken in tones that must have sounded to anyone else affectionately chiding rather than truly disappointed, while Harry ate his way through cakes and sandwiches, the staggering number of which would have choked a glutton. Owen's presence would have kept him from his resentful boredom and also halved the number of treats he ingested, but Owen's beatific smile indicated that Robbins had plans for uninterrupted hours with his best student. 

"I'm sure a place in the Civil Service could be found for a boy with a First," his father harrumphed, rubicund and running to fat in a way that afforded Harry no small satisfaction at his own eternal slimness. The statement, like most that emanated from the mouth of Christopher Hart, was meaningless; what else was Oxbridge for, than for staffing the Civil Service, regardless of honours?

"Indeed," his mother agreed, "and the right girl on that boy's arm can open all sorts of doors." Harry only wished that he could have persuaded someone entirely unsuitable to sit on his lap for the duration of this tea. Perhaps that tarty girl who worked in the chemist's shop near the Seeley, blouse unbuttoned to some scandalous depth, skirt barely long enough to cover an arse of unimpeachable firmness.

Perfunctory goodbyes made, Harry made his escape with relief, strolling along West Road with his hands in his pockets. When he turned the corner, he saw the tarty girl just lighting a cigarette. Her eyes flicked up to meet his, but he couldn't stop watching the way her lips pursed around the slim little stick. The sound of the evening Angelus bells ringing made his inability to look anywhere other than her mouth feel blasphemous. Melody, her name was, so she said, tipping her head curiously to hear his.

"Harry," he introduced himself, and she darted in to kiss each cheek, a butterfly-quick gesture that seemed far more Gallic than he was used to. Her flat was dingy, not at all exotic, but he could not possibly have cared less about her home furnishings, not when she let him unfasten the three bursting buttons of her half-done blouse and press his face into her heated flesh. 

She tugged on his hair – he could grow to like that very much indeed – and coolly informed him that he could have her arse but that was it, as she wasn't about to get up the duff and become a sad mum. Her arse was pink, and plump as peaches, and he felt beautifully cushioned by all that plush rump. She turned her head in surprise to catch his eye over her shoulder, past the black-and-blonde locks of her dyed hair. "Done this before, hey?"

He made her gasp the last word with a well-timed thrust. "Nothing new under the sun," he returned suavely, though this girl was a far cry from Lydia, his first, who'd teased him like mad with shy little kisses and caresses until he had her knickers off and then turned into a stone, heavy and unresponsive; by the time he was done, her thighs were pink from the chafing of his frantic hips but her Alice band was still firmly in place.

Melody rocked back, getting up on her hands and knees. "I might have a surprise for you yet," she said, a promise that got his blood humming.

"Give it to me now," he demanded. He could push so much deeper into her tight body like this. Her hips were going to be wearing the marks of his hands for days. He squeezed and little pink rolls of flesh were raised between his fingers; he marvelled at how he could shape her.

"You'll wait," she said with an assurance he couldn't fuck out of her. It was ragingly attractive. "For as long as you've been watching me, you can be patient just a bit longer."

He hadn't, was the thing. If he'd been eyeing her, it was either through Owen's specs, when what he was really seeing were the little green messages – Owen probably thought he was as smitten with her as she did herself if he really had been turned her way all that time – or it'd been unintentional, when he was thinking of something else and she'd happened to be in his line of sight. Not that she wasn't well worth looking at, and even better naked than she'd been with those tight and titillating clothes. "I hope I haven't made you uncomfortable," he said, grinding into her and pinching an erect nipple.

"Nah, I knew you'd be fun. Might as well get mine, right? 'Fore I turn you over?"

She clenched down on him then, and between coming with a shout and getting her off with his fingers, he forgot her odd phrasing entirely until he sat up the next morning to find Melody gone and his tutor, Walter Creevey, that singularly boring man, speaking to him in thrilling terms and gold-plated promises about something called Kingsman.

*

"Désolé," he says, and that's the end of his part of the Mali mission. The explosives go off as timed and in the scrambling confusion left in their wake, Harry just has to get to the pickup point. Stephen, sitting in the cockpit of the smallest Kingsman jet, nods briskly at him and gestures with one hand that he's fine with Harry's playing either co-pilot or passenger, whichever takes his fancy.

He doesn't know Stephen particularly well, despite the number of years that Stephen has been his particular transportation specialist. Stephen is neat and punctual and discreet; he has the self-effacing support-staff façade down perfectly, and Harry, used to being Galahad, star of the agency, has never really looked past it to discover what made Stephen willing, like him, to devote his life to Kingsman. Now that he thinks about it, it is obvious that Stephen must have been the one to pick him up and get him to the infirmary after he was disorientated by Professor Arnold's head's exploding all over him and the shockwaves he set off with his pocket grenade to escape Valentine's thugs. The least he can do is have a conversation with the man.

Sitting in the co-pilot's seat, he waits until Stephen's got them in the air and to their cruising altitude. Then he keeps on waiting, because he cannot think how to begin a conversation with a man whose job is to know his moods and preferences and abilities but about whom he has learnt nothing over the years; he is floundering like Bertie Wooster trying to reason his way into Jeeves's brain. Perhaps it would be more effective if he approached the situation as if it were a honeypot mission with Stephen as the mark. Better yet – what was Eggsy's trick to winning over his driver, Harry's nurses, and nearly everyone else with whom he came into contact?

"Alright, sir?" Stephen asks, voice respectfully pitched low enough that Harry can let the query fade into silence. He's been _sir_ for so long that the imbalance between them has been carved in stone; asking Stephen if he's seen any good films or had a particularly enjoyable weekend outing will only cause confusion.

"Yes, fine, thank you," he says. "It's good to see you again."

"And you, Agent Galahad," Stephen says, utterly competent and relaxed in the pilot's seat. Harry leaves him to it, sinking into one of the passenger seats and trying to catch up on his sleep.

Stephen wakes him in time to deplane, and Harry, caught between sleep cycles, cannot relax in the back of the taxi. He wants to be home, to be in his own space, to be in his own clothes and not his cover's. He feels strangely discontented, though the mission went swimmingly, he'd got a decent amount of sleep on the plane, and he has twenty-four hours to himself before he's due to report to HQ to complete endless streams of paperwork. The taxi pulls up and Harry steps out on the cobblestones.

Just feeling the heavy weight of his immobile brass doorknob against his palm – for the sake of the biometric scanner that precludes the need for inconvenient keys – makes a little of the dissatisfaction dissipate. The air in his front hall smells pleasantly of the lemon oil with which he'd polished the dining-room table before he left for Mali, and the scent relaxes him a bit more. He steps up the stairs briskly enough and draws himself a hot bath.

Harry watches dawn break from the tub, the master bath's single window glowing pink and salmon and gold in turn. He draws on soft corduroy trousers, a shirt, and his rust-coloured cardigan, and that troublesome restlessness subsides when he thinks that the best use of his day of freedom would be seeing Eggsy. It is not too early, surely, as there are a few people milling about the mews – he wonders abruptly which of his neighbours made it through V-Day, with or without blood on their hands – and anyway, as he understands it, very young children tend to rouse the entire household quite early. If he strolls over to Hesper Mews, he should not be coming at an inappropriate time.

The walk is refreshing, the air brisk and breezy, and he knows which house is Eggsy's from the Gerbera daisies in the window boxes; Eggsy is ravishingly sentimental, and between the name and his fondness for those bright colours, it's clear that he must have chosen those blossoms in particular. JB's blue-leather leash, tied to the bench outside number seven, is an unnecessary clue. Harry smiles and knocks on the door. A woman's hand twitches the lace curtain away from the window closer to the door, but he waits on the step for nearly half a minute, hearing a low agitated murmur of voices, before Eggsy opens the door.

Eggsy is dressed in nothing but soft sleep trousers – scarlet with cream-and-coffee pugs gambolling on them – and holding his sister, who's rubbing her fists into her sleepy eyes. Eggsy's hands are relatively small, compared to his own at any rate, but they look huge when one is cupping Daisy's head and the other is curled under her bottom and thigh. "Harry!" Eggsy says happily and tilts his face up and at an angle. Harry takes it for an invitation and bends his head to kiss him but Daisy makes a noise and Eggsy whips his head around to check on her, and Harry's left to salute the soft, scented skin behind an ear rather than a rosy mouth. "Ducks, whassamatter? Ain't you never seen a handsome man before? This's Harry." Eggsy's jiggling her on his arm, voice bright and coaxing, and Harry is entirely charmed by his beloved. 

"Hello, Daisy," he says, to which she responds by turning her face away and pressing it into her brother's warm neck.

"Oh, we had a rough nigh', din' we, Daisyluv? All them nasty teeth comin' in." Eggsy kisses the top of her head. "C'mon, we're havin' breakfast."

"Lovely." He could do with a cup of tea and a rack of toast.

The house smells salty-sweet, but it is the brightness of the yellow paint that makes Harry halt in his tracks when they enter the kitchen. No, it is the sunshine spilling wantonly in that makes it so eye-wateringly bright; in sober fact – he checks each eye's vision independently – it is a pleasantly creamy yellow like sugared lemon drops. 

Daisy's high chair is a medium-coloured wood that matches the kitchen cabinets, and Eggsy puts a bib on her and gives her a rusk before he starts snapping her in. "Shall I?" Harry starts before realising he has no idea what breakfast in this household looks like, or even if they've got proper tea leaves or only mass-produced teabags.

"Nah," Eggsy says. "Jus' sit so she c'n see your face." Harry's fairly sure that seeing his face while she feels the pain of her incoming teeth will only cause her to associate the two, but he's not going to argue with the resident Daisy expert. "Ducks, you wan' grapes or banana?"

Daisy's too teary-eyed to bother removing the rusk from her mouth, but she points in the direction of the grapes. "Here, Harry, give 'er her milk," Eggsy says, just as they all hear feet rushing down the stairs toward the front door. "Bye, mum!" Eggsy calls, and Harry knows enough to put the little two-handled cup in Daisy's free hand before she can get upset at her mother's departure. Eggsy's slicing grapes in half, his hands as steady and sure as his voice as he asks Harry about Mali, spelling out the words relating to weaponry and violence. Harry tries to answer in kind, but the sight of Daisy's wet, half-chewed rusk and the milk on her chin are off-putting enough that he keeps fumbling. He just wants Eggsy, had anticipated that Michelle would be caring for her daughter and he could steal her son away. "Here, give her these," Eggsy says, handing him a little plastic bowl full of grape halves. "I'm makin' scrambled eggs – you want?"

"Yes, please," Harry says, grimacing as the viscous insides of the grapes coat his fingertips. Daisy's eyeing him suspiciously but she opens her mouth willingly enough when Harry raises the fruit to her line of vision. "Should she not know how to feed herself by now?" he asks.

Eggsy's back stiffens only momentarily – the moles surrounding his spine jump together then apart – but his voice still gives him away. "She's a little behind, prob'ly 'cause she din' get enough of a safe routine before." So being allowed to take what's put in front of her is not something she's used to; Baker is going to meet a messy death at Eggsy's hands, if he hasn't already. "She'll feed herself when she's ready, won't you, ducks?" The gaze he turns on Harry mingles misery and determination, and Harry turns back to the child to continue feeding her fruit. The cold grapes must feel good against her sore gums, because she's reaching for his hand to speed him up.

"Here, love," Eggsy says presently, and Harry, thinking he's speaking to Daisy, doesn't turn until there's a hand on his shoulder and Eggsy's fingers under his chin, tilting it up. "Thanks for this," Eggsy says between swift kisses and Harry can feel his skin heating up under Daisy's watchful, wet gaze. "Don' let your breakfast get cold; I got her now," Eggsy continues, dragging another chair over and cooing when Daisy grins at the changing of the guard. "Yes, there's my Daisyluv, gonna eat her eggs and grow up big 'n' strong."

"Ezzy!" Daisy proclaims, raising her arms up and Eggsy doesn't let the stickiness of her small hands stop him from putting his face between them and kissing her nose. Eggsy is so willing to touch, so haptically charged, that Harry plans all manner of debauchery while he eats his scrambled eggs.

Daisy stays sweet as long as Eggsy's in her line of sight with food for her, but once the meal is over and he manoeuvres her out of her high chair, she's back to being fretful. Eggsy keeps up a quiet running commentary even as she splashes water from the kitchen tap over them both, wriggling madly as he tries to clean her hands and face. Eggsy dries her off but doesn't bother giving himself more than a cursory swipe with the towel before putting her in a soft-sided blue and purple playpen. 

"I know a little cutie whose big bruv went to Poland and got her a little gift, a little duck who's gettin' a present," Eggsy sing-songs and Daisy claps with minimal coordination but much enthusiasm. "Here," Eggsy says, digging through all of the stuff accumulated on top of the coffee table and then holding out a grey oval on his open palm so she can pick it up. Eggsy turns to talk to him once Daisy's moistened the egg thoroughly with her saliva. "It's a salt egg, souvenir from the Krakow Salt Mine. You been?"

Harry shakes his head. He's been to Warsaw, that unbearably modern city built anew over ravaged bones, but nowhere else in Poland. "Got a whole slew o' gifts, place was aces." Daisy's getting restive without her brother's full attention, so Eggsy turns back to her. "She'll go down for a nap in a couple hours, and Mum'll be back by then. I can come find you?" Eggsy offers. "Or you c'n stay?" It's clear which option he prefers, but Harry has no intention of staying trapped in a house with a child, even for her half-naked brother's lovely sake.

"Why don't I take JB for his walk?" he suggests.

"If you c'n wake the little bugger, tha'd be great," Eggsy says, evidently amused and not divining Harry's reasoning.

JB starts out sluggish but grows more energised as they walk, and Harry takes the gift of silence as an opportunity to consider how thoroughly love can upend a life. Eggsy is not the child's father but he loves her enough to put her above himself, to have one track of his mind constantly engaged by thoughts of her. It speaks well of Eggsy that he loves so freely and ungrudgingly; conversely, it speaks ill of Michelle that she is willing to use one child to raise the other. 

And of course, Eggsy's generous heart is inconveniencing him too; Eggsy could have been in his bed all night to be woken before morning broke when Harry came home. By now, Eggsy's voice would be hoarse from shouting his pleasure, and his arse raw from milking Harry dry.

True love is supposed to be a miracle – certainly Harry's never felt anything like this before, nor has he seen it work for anyone else – but its requitedness has not cleared the board of all of Eggsy's other attachments. If only it could, and Harry could devour him and be ruined in return.

*

Eggsy's thighs are thick parallel lines of gold against Harry's crisp white shirt, and Eggsy is wailing his delight, his frustration, his need for Harry to fuck him right out of his bloody mind. 

Harry dips down to suck on the head of Eggsy's cock, rosy with heat, and hears the volume of Eggsy's cries kick up a notch. His little love is as limber as a nymph, bent in half, and Harry pulls his mouth free to bite at his hip, at the tender inside of a flexed leg, before burrowing down to nip at the root of Eggsy's cock. "Oh god oh god oh god," Eggsy says. " _Harry._ "

Feeling Eggsy's hands press like bands of iron against his shoulders then down the length of his upper arms as if he's imprinting chevrons as he goes, Harry picks up his heavy head to gaze avidly at the sight so close it's straining his eyes. The wetness he's left on Eggsy's skin – spit and slick both all over his prick and thighs and hole – makes him look bruised, iridescently coloured like mother-of-pearl. 

Every time he sees Eggsy he thinks he's never looked lovelier, and there is no one else to see it, to marvel at the secret wonder of his lithe and radiant beloved.

"Off, off," Eggsy mutters angrily, pushing at the shirt that still clings to Harry's shoulders. His pepper of a mouth – for colour, for bite – is too bright to resist kissing, and Harry falls into it. Eggsy subsides and settles, moving his tongue slowly, one finger trailing delicately along Harry's jaw before settling next to his mouth, waiting for a dimple to appear and give that fingertip a cosy burrow. Harry knows his dimples are like divots in cream, his mortifyingly wobbly flesh utterly incongruous with his dignity, so he hides his face against Eggsy's throat for several thundering heartbeats before skimming his way along the razor's edge of Eggsy's jaw.

Eggsy tips his chin down instead of letting Harry settle his mouth against the underside of his jaw, and Harry rears back and tears the shirt off his own back. Eggsy spreads his legs to accommodate him before hooking one ankle over the other at the broadest part of Harry's bared back, his calves kissing Harry's scapulae. The smile Harry gets then is utterly unfair; Eggsy's own dimples are like chisel slices in alabaster and his eyes glow like moonstones.

Eggsy's hands, one after the other, glide up his neck, pushing against the grain of his hair from his nape to his crown, which feels so luxurious that Harry closes his eyes to savour the sensation. "C'mon, love," Eggsy says, lips against the corner of Harry's new eye. "Please," he says, kissing the lid of the other.

Harry does, moving so slowly he can feel the pressure of Eggsy's body from every angle, can feel Eggsy's pulse like galloping hoofbeats. Eggsy's head tips back against the pillow as Harry pushes forward, slow-motion smooth. There's no sense of fulfilment when he's in all the way – it's the motion that's keeping the beast inside him at bay, not how far he's come – but when he tries to pull back just enough to allow him to slam home again, Eggsy says, "No," and squeezes with every limb like a bloody python.

"Darling," Harry tries, losing his breath from the heat, but Eggsy just stubbornly repeats, "No," and Harry stays happily imprisoned in the paradise upon which he's trespassed and into which he's been made welcome, while Eggsy nimbly hooks his toes into the sheet, catches hold of it with his fingers, and draws it up over them both so they're in a private world.

*

Though both are Kingsman-issued and therefore identical, Harry has no trouble distinguishing Galahad's ring from Gaheris's; their fingers are of such different diameters that their rings are too. He picks up the smaller ring from his bedside table, throwing a glance at Eggsy, draped over his chest, wondering how on earth Eggsy had managed to scratch up the inside of his signet. It's only when he brings the ring closer to his eye that he realises that the scratches were made deliberately, by Eggsy and his unending supply of patience, because he can make out that the pattern they form is two sets of initials: JS, RC. 

He does not know who Eggsy is celebrating or commemorating and is not proud that the R makes him think of Roxanne first, though he's well aware that her surname does not begin with a C and really he should know by now that whatever it is that Eggsy shares with her, it's not going to end with the two of them in bed together. The curves of the letters catch the light as he twirls the ring between his thumb and forefinger; he wonders if the etching is deep enough for Eggsy's little finger to feel.

"My mates," Eggsy says into his chest, and Harry, startled, looks down and sees only the crown of a fawn-coloured head. "Jamal and Ryan. Lost them both on V-Day."

Harry keeps his voice soft and respectful; gold is soft, but inscribing the initials had not been a mere whim. "Mates, as in . . .?"

"As in, I'd build them a monument if I could." Eggsy releases a shuddery breath that fans through Harry's chest hair, a sound so forlorn Harry has to catch his face and draw it up for a kiss of comfort. "As in, unswerving." Eggsy sits up all the way so Harry does too; they are shoulder-to-shoulder with the sheet twisted round their hips, and Harry relinquishes the ring, dropping it on Eggsy's waiting palm. "Proper brave, they were," Eggsy says, "brave to stay wi' me, not like the rest of that lot that fucked off once Dean started movin' up in the world of shitarses." Eggsy polishes the ring with heavy presses of his thumb. "He had a way o' poisoning everything – girls I liked bein' put on corners, blokes I was friends wi' becomin' runners for 'im, most just suddenly not seein' me even when we'd grown up together. He had cash, he knew which coppers were bent. But not them. Jamal an' Ryan, they stayed, they stayed true. Shit, it ain't like they din' need the money. But they picked me over him. An' I loved them." Eggsy's eyes are wet and his voice is small, but he doesn't break.

"This ring is their monument," Harry says. "To the unswerving."

"To the boys," Eggsy says, then reaches across Harry for his mobile. Harry watches him press his thumb twice on the home button, long taps. Eggsy looks up at him to see if he's figured it out. "Morse code – M, for mates. Only works wi' my thumbprint. O set it up for me." The screen that comes up using that code has nothing Kingsman-related on it, not even Eggsy's normal home-screen photograph of JB, which he'd argued was a slick way to establish the ordinariness of any undercover identity in which he was operating; instead there are icons for pictures, songs, games, and chats. Eggsy opens up the picture gallery and tilts the mobile Harry's way so he can see images of the three brave musketeers, all so young with sad eyes and defiant smiles. He would never have picked Jamal and Ryan as heroes, but there's something about Eggsy's chiselled face that promises greatness, and the other boys had, at least subconsciously, recognised that. "An' one of 'em took this one," Eggsy says, tapping his thumb on the home button again, this time a dash and two dots – D. This level of the mobile is dedicated entirely to his sister, and the background is a photograph of Eggsy holding his sister; she's laughing and he's kissing her cheek so firmly that the fat of her cheek has shifted up so that her eye is nearly closed and it looks like she's winking. "'S my favourite pic I ever took."

Harry is wonderstruck – how has Eggsy not bled out from every opening he's made in his heart? He counts himself lucky, that he's neither lost nor chased away either of the two men who count his heart as a prize. He gathers Eggsy close with an arm around his shoulders. "Did you know Owen's been my closest friend since we were thirteen?" he asks when the screen goes dark and Eggsy looks ready to put his memories away.

Eggsy snorts. "Yeah, an' he said you haven' changed a bit since you were runnin' round in short pants."

"I have matured immensely," he says with spurious dignity, and Eggsy laughs, a little brittle but still genuinely amused, toppling sideways into him. "I'll wager he didn't tell you I got him into Kingsman."

Eggsy gets a hand on his chest and pushes back to study his face; those glass-green eyes have gone serious again. "No, he din' tell me that."

Harry falters for a moment, both because of Eggsy's expression – it looks, oddly, like pity – and his own uncertainty about how to discuss the circumstances under which he first heard the name Kingsman, but decides Eggsy can stand to hear about Melody and her peachy rump. "I had picked up a girl, a very pretty girl, who offered . . . rather different delights than the university girls, shall we say," he says, cupping Eggsy's plump arse by way of illustration, and Eggsy flushes responsively. "She was meant to keep me in her flat, though I doubt she was given specific instructions to proceed as she did –"

"Took her chance when she saw it, I bet. You's spectacular now, musta been spectacular then," Eggsy muses. Harry idly wishes that Eggsy would display at least some jealousy; he doesn't need the full chest-thumping show, but a note of irritation in that voice would do much for his ego. 

To drown out his inner rantings, he tips Eggsy's face up. "Sweetheart," he says, and Eggsy smiles into the kiss. His arms stretch up and he rests his crossed wrists on Harry's far shoulder, and Harry tries to memorise every detail of this moment when he is happier than he ever dreamt of being.

"So who was she?" Eggsy asks, cheek against Harry's heart. "Not a knight, righ'? Rox's the first."

"A member of the staff, I presume. As was my tutor –" though now that he thinks about it, it doesn't make much sense that anyone could hold two such demanding jobs, and if Creevey had been undercover, he'd been dormant for years. "In any case, he told me that Kingsman had had its eye on me for some time, that I had the potential to do very well with the agency. I asked all my questions" – not that Creevey had been particularly adept at answering them, and how was this only striking him now? – "and when the pitch was over, I told him that I wanted to meet the knight who planned to propose me."

"Who was it?" Eggsy asks, shivering pleasurably when Harry draws his thumb down his spine.

"Christopher Williams, then Agent Gawain." Brown hair, blue eyes, bland oval face, boxy body not even a Kingsman suit could shape into alluring lines. But the excitement in Gawain's eyes had been undeniable; Harry was the prize and Gawain wanted to be the one to reel him in. "I wanted the trials, didn't want to wait for my degree to be conferred, but Gawain said that I wouldn't be allowed to become a candidate until I'd finished my schooling. I told him I'd wait but there was someone else they should find a place for." Eggsy's back is downy, delightful, and he hums at each of Harry's strokes as if he doesn't even know he's doing it. "Owen had already had the idea for the glasses – had built a pair already, actually. He gave them to me to test out."

"What, seriously?" Eggsy asks. "That far back?"

"They didn't record the video or have any audio capability, but he could see what I was seeing when I wore them, and he could send messages that showed up on my lenses. It was not quite the Stone Age." Eggsy grins at him and gives him a squeeze, encouraging him to resume caressing Eggsy's bared back. "I told Gawain that the best mind at Cambridge was right under his nose. At our graduation, Owen told me he'd received the offer." He can remember how proud he was at that moment, not just of Owen, who had of course swept up every available honour, but of himself too, that he had found a way for them to stay together, that Owen would know now that he always had a place in the world by Harry's side, no matter what hell the rest of his life had become.

Eggsy's puzzlement has drawn a line between his eyebrows. "He din' have anythin' else lined up? Top o' his class an' all?"

He's not about to break any confidence, even an implicit one, and explain that Owen's fortunes had been tied in good faith to Julian Robbins, who'd divorced himself from his prize pupil with brutal efficiency. "Kingsman can be very persuasive." He'd found it so, had been swept away by the idea of an agency so bound up in romance and its ideals that Arthurian mythology was woven into the very threads of it.

Eggsy sits up on his knees and kisses him, light slips of his tongue against Harry's mouth. "Bet if they'd just sent you, he'd have said yes even faster." Eggsy's eyes are closing invitingly and he's tugging at Harry's hair, sweet little pulls that communicate desire so clearly. Harry groans and kisses back helplessly. Eggsy's mobile chirps an alarm, breaking the spell, and Eggsy rests his brow on Harry's and says, low and clear, "I've to be in the City in an hour."

"Will you come back tonight?" He can wait until tonight, he thinks; he bargains with himself that Eggsy back in his bed tonight means languorous kissing now and perhaps a bit of manual pleasure for the beauty grinding his cock against Harry's belly.

"Nah, wanna spend more time wi' Mum and Dais while 'm good," Eggsy says, apologetic but firm. 

Harry only wishes he were capable of getting it up again as quickly as Eggsy, because a firm fucking, his hand on Eggsy's nape, the length of Eggsy's dappled back flexing for his viewing pleasure, is exactly what he wants right now. Better yet, he could welcome Eggsy into his body, but Eggsy's first time at that will require more leisure than they have. 

He wonders what it would be like, to be a girl looking at Eggsy and wanting him just the same. Knowing he could work his way into a ripe cunt, all slick little pushes and sighs in that gutter voice, knowing he could plant a seed inside that would grow into a beautiful child, a child that would sprawl like Eggsy did and Lee before him. He wonders if Roxanne or any of the girls who cut Eggsy dead once Baker got tangled in his life ever dreamt of Eggsy like that. It's absurdly arousing, thinking of it now, and it's not that he's got his wires crossed and wants a child or wishes he were a woman; it's that he wants to open up and let Eggsy lay claim to him. God, does he want to be fucked.

"Darling," he says, cupping the backs of Eggsy's shoulders with both hands and guiding him down, watching as Eggsy's head tips back like a blossom too heavy for its slender stem so that his throat is bared, "lie back." This, after all, he can make good at any speed, and he'll still have enough time to get Eggsy dressed properly for his rendezvous with a contact who thinks a Kingsman suit makes its wearer the next best thing to royalty.

Eggsy goes, trusting, and Harry hides his soft cock in the cocoon of the sheet while applying his mouth to Eggsy's rampant one. Eggsy's throat clicks, dry, and his eyes go hazy, softer than moss. Harry is taking the scenic route, little kisses all around the circumference and down the length of the cock in his hand, and Eggsy's fervent "unnnhh" nearly drowns out the sound of Harry's tongue meeting Eggsy's slit. 

Harry is happy like this; he wants to give Eggsy all the pleasure his body and brain are capable of processing. He is happier yet when he figures out just how much of Eggsy's lovely cock he can get in the wet heat of his mouth, the tight grip of his throat, and Eggsy presses up against Harry's hands locking down his hips; Eggsy proves to be the stronger, arching up and then folding like a wave crashing. When he swallows, when Eggsy uses a trembling thumb to push the last of his spunk from Harry's lip into Harry's mouth, he's positively ecstatic.

*

They've been running side by side on the HQ grounds for miles now, and his peripheral vision is better than ever thanks to the prosthetic eye, so Harry has no excuse for not realising sooner that Owen's shirt – a fitted black t-shirt that reads _Rock Salt_ over an image of an electric guitar – must have been a gift from Eggsy, from that salt mine he enjoyed so much in Poland. The play on Owen's name would have been irresistible to Eggsy, and Owen evidently likes it enough to wear it as they run cross-country, undeterred by the first falling leaves and the dips in the lawn. There's already a salt lamp on Owen's desk – it's now what illuminates Daisy's treasured scribbles – and Harry's seen the salt heart Michelle hung off the handle of the cabinet where she keeps her wretched teabags and the salt egg Daisy likes to keep her little fists locked around; what he hasn't seen is a single gift for him.

Eggsy, not being the jealous type, evidently has no idea how easy it is to set off someone who is.

Owen, who has known him for years, does. It's probably because Owen has been putting up with him for so long that his approach is blunt. "You cannot be jealous of his _mother_. Or of a baby."

No, Harry agrees, he cannot. And yet. He wants Eggsy to be as wholly his as he is Eggsy's. 

"And he thinks of Roxy as his other sister, you've seen them together for yourself." 

"There's a word for siblings who kiss like that," Harry says nastily, one only child to another, and Owen looks ready to wrestle him to the ground to defend Eggsy's honour the old-fashioned way. 

"It's reassurance for them, uncomplicated affection. Don't you spoil it."

Harry begrudgingly lets Owen have that one; though Roxanne obviously has other sources for affection and should not need to put her mouth all over Eggsy, he will admit that _uncomplicated_ is hardly the word for the vastness of his feelings for Eggsy. 

His pace slows when he at last realises who the source of the remaining tension must be. No. He is not going to fight Owen for Eggsy or Eggsy for Owen or whatever permutation will leave him alone and bleeding inwardly.

"Owen," he croaks, as if it is the exercise that has constricted his larynx and not his own messy idiocy. "No." Belatedly, he wonders if Eggsy is exactly what Owen needs, so many years after he locked his heart away. Eggsy is the key to so many wonders.

"No, Heretic," Owen says, slowing and circling back to where Harry has stopped as if the thread Harry's always imagined between them ought not to be stretched taut for so long. "He's _your_ Anthea." Yellowing leaves rustle above them, and Harry wants so badly to hold tight to the first best thing he ever found; Owen is gracious and rests one palm on the crown of Harry's messy head and lets Harry's sweaty temple find a home against his cheekbone. 

*

Harry's sulkily working through a stack of paperwork in the room with the silver coffee service when Eggsy pops his head in, grins, and enters, dragging Roxanne in with him. "Hello, love," Eggsy says, an immediate distraction. The scent of soapy skin permeates the air when Eggsy dips his head for a swift kiss – he's been for a run and a shower, or perhaps Roxanne found him, convinced him to spar, and allowed herself the indulgence of cleaning up with him after.

"Hello. Lancelot."

Lancelot is looking at him with her arms folded across her chest. "You know you can call me Roxy."

"A privilege," he says, but his spite has for the most part faded into indifference, now that he is secure enough not to question why she must always be fucking attached to Eggsy's hip. He'd had so many questions for her once upon a time – was she after Eggsy, why wasn't she after Eggsy, what did Eggsy want from her, why wasn't Eggsy wanting him – and now the only query he has for her is about the conditioner she uses, because he has to get his hands on whatever she's found that leaves her hair so sleek and buoyant. He'll go to his grave before he gives her the satisfaction of knowing he's aware she's bested him at anything.

Eggsy is darting his eyes back and forth between them like he's at Wimbledon, and Harry unbends to assuage his anxiety. "It's a pleasure to see you today, Roxy," he says, and he earns a twofold immediate reward: first, Eggsy's pleased smile and nudge of the knee, and second, the revelation that Roxanne's genuine grin is as dopily toothy as his own, though she at least escaped those embarrassing dimples that belong in a baby's backside rather than an adult's face.

"What you doin' here?" Eggsy asks.

"Waiting for Merlin to show up and put me out of my misery," Harry says, not entirely joking. The eyeglasses have recording functions now, have had for decades, and since he keeps them on or positions them appropriately when he's on a mission, the sodding paperwork is duplicative of what's stored on the Kingsman servers Owen built himself; he should not have to waste half his bloody life filling out forms to justify the existence of the agency's archivists.

"O's meetin' you here? Sweet," Eggsy says. "I need his help anyway." He holds up his mobile, the screen of which is so extravagantly shattered that it seems to be all opaque white edges; it puts Harry in mind of the two-way mirror Eggsy broke for the water test, which leads him very happily to memories of Eggsy half-naked and wet and infinitely clever.

"Sicily?" Harry asks eventually, and Eggsy's puzzled frown and Roxanne's steady tapping at her own phone tell him his period of reflection lasted longer than a few excusable moments.

"Yeah. Wouldn' have the cheek to lie if it were, like, Daisy droppin' it in the bath or somethin'. Not to our Merlin." He's so sincere; Harry lifts a hand to his cheek, and Eggsy, the lovely menace, leans into it.

Roxanne left the door half shut, so it's a surprise to hear a sort of muffled thump and watch it swing open, revealing Anjali with a tray heaped with snacks. "Hello, golden girl," she says before dragging her gaze away from Roxanne to take in him and Eggsy. She sets the tray down on the table – Harry can smell the spices and sugar and his mouth begins to water though he doesn't have the sweet tooth Eggsy does – and says, "Smashy Smashy Eggman!" with real delight.

Eggsy laughs at the nonsensical salutation. "Funj, light o' my life, fire o' Roxy's loins, missed you, pet."

"Missed me or my cooking?" she asks, reaching back with one hand so Roxanne can lace their fingers together. They are rather charming together, Harry is prepared to admit that much; he is growing as a person.

"You," Eggsy says, batting his lashes, and while Harry is slow to figure out why Eggsy's turning on the charm when he's already got enough food in front of him to fell an elephant, Anjali is definitely not.

"Buttering me up so I'll call Galahad by your ridiculous pet name for him isn't going to work, Eggman." Eggsy pouts, and she laughs, still helplessly charmed. "Put those big eyes away and eat up," she advises. Eggsy shrugs and does as he's bid.

"You wanna see big eyes, you sh'd see my sister," he says, mouth full of peanuts and jaggery. "Show you a pic, 'cept my phone's busted."

Harry, reaching for a peanut cluster of his own, feels Roxanne's heavy gaze on him. If she is expecting him to produce images of Daisy on his own mobile, she will be waiting forever. He bites defiantly down, meeting her eyes. 

Eggsy smooths over the pause like he hasn't noticed. "Cutest baby in the world, my Dais." He licks his lips, savouring his treat, and says, consideringly, "Bet _you_ were cute as fuck, posh little Roxybaby, there's prob'ly a picture o' you gummin' on a silver rattle."

Roxanne slides her basilisk gaze from him to Eggsy, lightening it as she goes, though she pokes at Eggsy's side hard with an insistent finger. "Shit, really? Wha'd I do?" Eggsy asks, trying to curve his body away while staying in reaching distance of the tray.

"There does happen to be such a picture, a whole roll of them in fact, and I look high as a kite from the silver polish. I got rid of every copy I could locate. I was a truly hideous baby."

Eggsy and Anjali and Roxanne all laugh, and Harry considers whether he needs a better lock for the cupboard that holds his own photograph albums, including the baby pictures. Visual confirmation of how long he has had his dimpled bottom and ludicrous curls should never see the light of day. "Betcha I could find one of 'em," Eggsy says.

Roxanne smirks. "You? No. You'd have to be Merlin" – her smile fades and her voice slows as the realisation hits her – "and you've got him wrapped around your little finger."

"Other way 'round, pet," Eggsy says, and before Harry can even begin to decipher that, Owen walks in, tablet in hand, ready to help sort through the reams of paperwork Harry's supposed to have completed by now but very willing, at Eggsy's enthusiastic prompting, to show Anjali the photographs of himself with Daisy that are taking up storage space on that tablet.

*

Even with every conceivable honour sewn up and the Linguistics Tripos authoritatively vanquished, his voracious intellectual curiosity meant that Owen persisted in working; he had his nose in a book, the thickness of which rivalled the width of his wrists, as the sun beat down on them both. Surely Kingsman would be impressed enough with him to make him an offer? Surely Harry could test the waters a bit, and make it known that he'd found work better worth doing – he _would_ be a knight, if the eagerness with which Gawain courted him was any indication – than staying at Cambridge for a doctorate. Owen had outstripped his instructors, Robbins included, anyway, so all he would have at the end of years of work he'd likely do on his own in any case would be a few letters after his name. Kingsman could channel all of that blazing intelligence, all of that fantastic creativity, to ends worth pursuing; he and Owen could change the world.

Harry found, though, that he did not want to break the peace of the day, the hazy indolence that came over him when he had no revisions to make and he could practically hear Owen's brain purring with exertion and contentment. Robbins was apparently a feast-or-famine type of lover, either intensely present in every aspect of Owen's life or withdrawn entirely, and Harry was making do with the times he had Owen to himself. He would not spoil this one by rocking the boat of Owen's happiness.

He was not the one who ruined it, in the end; he was merely the conduit. 

When his own stomach began growling, he hauled Owen away from his precious book – he glanced at the open pages, littered with diacritical marks, and shook his head at his polyglot friend – and coaxed him to the Servery, where they could at least get something hearty, if not gourmet. Owen would not care about the exquisite delicacies Harry had sampled with the _amour_ who'd taken him for French food two night ago, when Owen himself had been fully occupied with Robbins. Owen, the stubborn bastard, could not be argued out of his priorities.

Portions of sausage-and-mash in front of them, they tucked in. Mouths full, they grinned at each other, and Harry finished chewing and asked, "Cards? Chess? Pool?" He was competitive, and he knew it as surely as he knew Owen would match him.

"Pool," Owen said, stretching his arms up over his head in preparation. Harry could see red marks – from a mouth, from fingers, from bindings – on his collarbone and belly before Owen's arms came down; Owen's glasses had taught him how to look without appearing to observe, and Owen seemed unaware that he'd revealed so much, but Harry flushed, just a little. 

It was Harry's slowness to recover from Owen's friendly taunting stretch – no one had limbs as sinewy and strong as Owen – that kept them in the Servery, where their classmates could find them. Philip and Hugh blundered innocently in, congratulating Owen on working with Dr. Robbins, whose invention was the most remarkable thing they'd heard of, and surely Owen counted himself lucky to stand by the great man's side and listen to the ideas he came up with, and wasn't it the best time to be alive, this modern age with all the things one could do – if one were a genius – with computers.

Harry asked, "What?" for both of them, as Owen looked too perplexed to make sense of what Phil and Hugh were saying. 

"These glasses!" Hugh exclaimed. "If a surgeon wore them, every detail of an operation could be transmitted back to his students!" Hugh was halfway through the lengthy slog of earning his degree in Medical Sciences and it made sense that his mind would inevitably gravitate toward his field.

"How is that different from a camera in the room?" Harry asked, snappishly.

"Robbins has come up with some way of sending the person – the surgeon, say – messages in real time. If the surgeon were to start to make a mistake, a supervisor watching could redirect him in time. It's ingenious," Phil responded.

"It is," Harry agreed whole-heartedly, but Owen was wearing the look of someone who was trying to keep comprehension at bay.

"How did you hear about this?"

"Robbins gave a demonstration to our Chief Fellow last week, and a talk to us just now," Phil said, evidently surprised by Owen's question. "I thought you must have put together the slides he used; everyone knows you're his pet."

No one knew what Robbins and Owen were to each other, then, no one but him; Phil had meant nothing by that phrasing except that Owen and Robbins were synonymous with Linguistics to all their classmates.

"Yes, I'd . . . I'd forgot," Owen said, scraping up a ghastly attempt at a smile from some terrible place. "I'm glad you were impressed."

"We ought to get going," Harry said, foolishly putting himself between Owen and the other boys, as if they posed any kind of physical threat. He had no idea what would actually help.

"What's good today?" Hugh asked.

"Hard to go wrong with sausage-and-mash," Harry said, and got Owen to his room. He should have kept them out in the sunshine, on the lawn of the Fellows' Bowling Green, where no-one had ever been able to find them.

Owen was not someone who thought best while pacing, but Harry had never seen him so still. "If I'd published, I'd have had to include him as a co-author. I am his student, working with concepts he's taught me." Of course Owen would start with assumptions of decency, but that hesitant tone was entirely new and shattering to Harry's system.

Leaving aside the question of why Owen hadn't seen fit to publish his invention, Harry did his best to halt the train of Owen's thought. "It's not the same at all," he said flatly. "You taught yourself nearly all of it; I was there." Even if he hadn't understood most of what Owen was talking about, he'd seen Owen construct his own foundation and then spire after shining spire. "Anyway, he took sole credit – you heard Phil and Hugh."

"Why, though?" Owen sounded so lost.

"Because it's a work of genius, and that's how he wants to be known."

"But he doesn't even have enough of an understanding of computing to be credible," Owen said. Logic was getting him nowhere, but Owen evidently could not get his bearings enough to try anything else.

"Neither does anyone else, enough to question him," Harry pointed out, because Owen had ventured into a new world and tapped into its unlimited potential. "He hasn't published it either. You're the only one who could challenge him." Harry wished he would, wished Owen would expose and shame the man who'd not only betrayed him but kept Harry apart for unbearable pockets of time from the one person who meant something to him.

But Owen was already shaking his head, mechanically, like defending himself from this unexpected attack was out of the question. "No," he said, his eyes gone dead, their forest green turning to pits in the whiteness of his shocked face. "I cannae. _Heretic, please_ ," Owen gasped, crumpling and stretching out hopeless hands, and Harry, stunned, opened his arms to hold his _noli me tangere_ best friend for the first time.

Owen was shaking, sobbing soundlessly, and Harry rested his forefinger on Owen's neck to feel the quivers of his throat and the pulse pounding in his carotid artery. Owen's head was pressed against Harry's chest like he was small, a downy innocent – Harry raged at the thought of Robbins allowing himself Owen's body, falsely winning Owen's love, revealing his true colours only after he'd ensured Owen would never seek to avenge himself – and Harry pressed his cheek to Owen's soft hair and dreamt of being a Kingsman knight, trained and ready to smite the dead man walking who'd killed the heart of the best man he knew.

*

Harry's heart is beating fast; it always does when Eggsy is so close, and Harry seriously considers whether this love is shortening his life. Tucking the last raspberry in Harry's mouth, Eggsy uncurls from his side and stands to take their crockery to the sink. Harry comes up close behind him, not giving his poor heart a rest, and noses at his nape before pressing his mouth to the soft hollow. Eggsy hums, pleased, and Harry winds his arms around Eggsy's slim waist, pressing himself at the same time against the splendid roundness of Eggsy's arse.

"Darling," he says into Eggsy's hairline, "what would you say if I suggested we should go to bed now –"

"I'd be on that with a quickness," Eggsy interrupts, washing his hands and turning round to drape his wet hands over Harry's shoulders.

"– and that once we're in our bed you should fuck me?" Harry continues, undeterred. 

Eggsy's shining eyes go unfathomably wide as he looks up at Harry, studying him. "I'd be on that with a fuckin' _righteous_ quickness," he says, starting to grin as he tips his chin up, inviting Harry to plunder.

Old habits die hard, though, and muscle memory is enough for them to land on the bed, once they're both naked, with Eggsy underneath him. With the Nile-green sheets for a backdrop – Harry is capable of planning: result – Eggsy's irises glow like peridots, though slightly bluer, like precious stones on the ocean floor. Eggsy's eyes curve up into little crescents when he smiles, elated, like it's a wonderful surprise to find himself here in this particular position, and Harry, lulled into a false sense of security, is on his back with Eggsy looming over him before he quite knows how that happened.

Eggsy steps off the bed, taking deep breaths and rummaging in the drawer where Harry keeps his jar of lubricant. He's never yet managed to put a condom on with Eggsy, and sees no reason to start now, so he shakes his head when Eggsy holds one up questioningly.

It is a difference of mere centimetres – lying on his back with his hips flat on the bed, waiting to be sucked, versus tilting his hips up, ready to be fucked – but a crucial one, as he learned on a honeypot decades ago, well before the man he's in love with was even born. But Eggsy, now kneeling on the bed beside him, isn't looking at his hips or his cock. Eggsy is looking at his face and leaning over to kiss him, soft and thorough, as if Harry's mouth has been his ultimate goal. 

Or maybe the goal is to touch every inch of Harry's skin, lighting it all up in a thousand discrete pinpricks of fire. Eggsy's fingers trace down his throat, along his arms. They are startlingly incendiary pushing his small thatch of chest hair against the grain, reverent as they slide down Harry's legs, making them feel endless - _eight mile long_ , Eggsy murmurs, smiling – and when strong hands cup his heels those fingers are caressing his ankles. Harry remembers that it was Eggsy's blush at his bare ankles that first gave him hope that they'd end up in bed together, and he blushes in turn when Eggsy folds himself in half to lay his mouth on them. 

He only knows he's making a mess of himself when Eggsy looks up, grins, and unhooks his hands from his nest of candyfloss curls, now surely spiralling uncontrollably all over his pillow. If Eggsy's ministrations are designed to make him beg, that's what he'll do. "Sweetheart," he pleads, "give me that come-hither cock." His toes curl just at the words; having Eggsy thrusting into him might well make him lose his mind.

Eggsy drops his head and bites contemplatively at Harry's belly. "Y' wan' me to fuck you proper, or posh style?"

It's not fair, that he's expected to speak when Eggsy's tongue is dipping into his belly button. "What do you consider 'posh style'?" His voice is not going to hold up for much longer.

"That thing," Eggsy says, labouring under the delusion that he's clarifying anything; he's got his knees under him now, and Harry's eyes get stuck on the curves of his arse, raised up pertly. But it's his level voice that's truly hypnotic, the way it paints pictures Harry cannot unsee. "Where you close your legs 'round my cock." Eggsy's thighs – thick, round, and taut – are themselves the most perfect invitation to Oxford style that Harry has ever been blessed to see.

Eggsy is still talking and stroking his skin. "Saw it in a clip once, both o' the boys in school ties and fuck all else. Was that what your schools were like? All o' you fuckin' each other's thighs, thinkin' noble thoughts and shit? You'd get laughed right off the estates, you would. Just fuck who you fancy, don't need to be bringing school spirit and Plato and the Queen into it."

That's all Harry can take. He pulls Eggsy down so that they are skin-to-skin, the velvet of Eggsy's prick skidding up his thigh. Eggsy's eyes go positively molten. "I want a proper fucking," Harry says, enunciating with great care so there's no mistake.

"From an improper gent," Eggsy says, one slick finger inside Harry before he can muster up a rebuttal. Eggsy is a gentleman in the way he consistently puts others ahead of himself. In this case, it's that he coaxes Harry to the brink just with those fingers stroking inside him and then gladly, madly over the edge with that thick cock pushing forward in sharp little bursts of power untempered by finesse. 

Harry is mad for him, for the dimples in Eggsy's back that he digs into, the sweat-slick glide of his cock against Eggsy's muscled belly, the way Eggsy sets his teeth in his throat when his thrusts make Harry's head tip back. Harry loves that any touch to the lines where his thighs join his trunk, where the skin is especially soft, makes Eggsy keen and choke; there must be some gymnast's muscle there that Harry doesn't know the name of but that Eggsy has worked to hair-trigger sensitivity.

Between Eggsy's labouring grunts, Harry's drawn-out moans, and the wet slap of flesh on flesh, their bed is the site of a cacophony. It is immensely satisfying, and if Harry gives himself wank material for the next week by bruising his handprint into Eggsy's arse, he doesn't think Eggsy truly minds.

*

"Ha, ha," Eggsy says tauntingly. "'f you married Harry f'r real, your name'd be Roxy Hart."

"Like that dim tart in the movie?" Roxy asks, frowning. "Though if I do marry Harry, it would only be because I'd dropped IQ points in some traumatic accident, so perhaps that's appropriate."

"Oi!" Eggsy protests. "Y' sh'd be so lucky."

Harry looks longingly at Arthur and Merlin, who huddled together as soon as some of the coordinates on their beloved RISKS/EVENTS graph jumped. If he is to go undercover as a posh bastard with unquestionable arm candy, should it not be Eggsy rather than Roxanne that he's escorting? He's never worked with either knight, but at least not having to feign lust for his companion can only aid the mission.

"Galahad," Arthur finally says, "you and Gaheris will partner up for the reconnaissance mission in Paris, leaving tonight. Lancelot, we're keeping you here for a few days, at which time you'll fly to Santiago." Merlin, looking impressively official, has his mouth set in a thin line; Harry knows Owen's disapproval when he sees it, but cannot figure out what part of the information Arthur just relayed is setting him off. "You two, go; Jeremy's waiting." Harry tries, but cannot catch Owen's eyes, as the man is having a silent conversation with Eggsy, who simply nods and follows Harry down to the shop.

Jeremy is waiting for them in the back office, armed with a sketchpad and a pencil, his measuring-tape hanging around his neck. "Paid company," Harry says, pointing at Eggsy, "and buyer," gesturing at himself. 

Jeremy gives a brisk nod. "No glasses on the young gentleman, then."

"Yeah, alrigh'," Eggsy says agreeably, browsing a book of suiting-fabric samples. Harry doesn't like the idea of his being without a two-way link to the handlers, but Eggsy seems unconcerned.

"Colour preferences?"

"Bold colours suit him, of course, but Gaheris looks particularly fetching in softer ones," Harry says, attention successfully recentred; there are no secrets in Kingsman, but Jeremy is, of necessity, a particular confidant, and knows that in this case _fetching_ also implies _and even younger than he already is_. "Dove-grey, lavender, creamy yellow, even aubergine."

"Lapels a bit too wide?" Jeremy suggests, sketching it out, unable to keep from drawing a cursory face for the figure, and there, in a few quick lines, is Eggsy's sharp and delicate profile on the page. Harry wants to tear the sheet from the pad and frame it. "Yes, we can manage that. Shouldn't take more than an hour for me to alter one of the off-the-peg suits we keep for display. I'll send it to the salon." Harry does not disgrace himself, but only because the idea of a slightly improper suit – betokening the younger man's ignorance regarding bespoke tailoring – is a sobering one; Jeremy could easily have suggested wrapping Eggsy-as-escort in cloth-of-gold like an offering to the randiest of the pagan gods and Harry would have melted on the spot.

"Y're gonna make me look a right plonker," Eggsy says resignedly, though still seeming excited by the prospect of sharing a mission with Harry. "But Harry, now, 'e should look sharp."

"I'll wear one of the suits I keep at HQ," Harry says to Jeremy. "And you needn't worry about any of my accessories; I've got something special in mind."

"What, you got some of the shoes that Daniel Day-Lewis personally cobbled?" Eggsy asks like he's honestly curious what could count as _special_ above and beyond the Kingsman standard. Harry leads him out of the shop proper, the sound of Jeremy's laughter staying with them for the first few steps.

"Where to next?" Eggsy asks, ceding the leadership for this mission to Harry as if he's entirely green; it is charging Harry up to the point that he has to swing Eggsy into a dark wood-panelled corner and kiss the breath out of him. "Tell me what I said an' I'll say it again," Eggsy offers, his mouth looking gorgeously smudged and overheated. "Harry," he says, dropping his forehead to Harry's lapel.

Harry kisses the top of his head and leads the way to the shuttle. Miranda is waiting there with a tablet for each of them; Owen must have told him where Harry was likely to go. "Mission details," he says cheerfully. "Tablets are yours until you deplane."

"We're flyin'?" Eggsy asks, as if this is the sticking-point, rather than his assumed identity as a man willing to sell his considerable charms. "Wha's wrong wi' the train?"

"Flying will take half the time of the Eurostar and establish Galahad's unfettered access to money that he can spend as stupidly as he likes," Miranda says without missing a beat.

Eggsy eyes him sharply, then grins. "Like on me."

Miranda can't hold back a grin of his own. "Like on you, Gaheris. Or rather, Gary."

Eggsy's smile fades. "What? I gotta be a tart called _Gary_?"

"Far less memorable than 'Eggsy,'" Harry points out, boarding the shuttle.

Their first stop in HQ is the salon. Harry sits in one of the barber's chairs and smiles politely at the man already bustling over to groom him.

"I gotta get shaved too?" Eggsy asks, eyes a little wide. Has he never been properly shaved before?

"It's quite a pleasant experience," Harry assures him. "And it will make you look younger, which benefits the mission." 

A second man appears, stropping a straight razor, as the first applies a hot towel to Harry's face.

"Wha's your name, bruv?" he hears Eggsy ask the man, clearly stalling; it is a mystery to him why this luxury has Eggsy so on edge when he has proved himself more than equal to beating any number of armed guards answering to an actual madman. Harry cannot hear the man's answer, but hears Eggsy ask dubiously, "Omelette?"

The man laughs. "Amrit," he repeats.

"Amrit," Eggsy echoes, sounding relieved, as if a name were a proper safeguard. "Alrigh', bruv, 'm trustin' you not t' Freddy Krueger me. An' I'm Eggsy."

"Eggsy and Omelette," Amrit says, laughing again, and Eggsy's answering laugh turns into a sigh when the hot towel touches his face.

Amrit manages not only a beautifully close shave on Eggsy's face but also to make his hair look longer than it is, straightening out its slight wave; he tousles the locks and Eggsy looks approvingly in the mirror. "Bruv, you got a gift. Eh, Harry?"

Harry has been trying to read the mission parameters; if he listens to Eggsy's bright chatter, he will achieve nothing but a besotted smile. "Mmm," he murmurs as if in agreement. "Just clean up the back," he tells his own barber.

"Wha'? Those li'l curls on y'r nape? No!" Eggsy protests, and Harry flushes hot at the reminder of Eggsy's questing fingers threading through them.

"Yes," he says, tone flat as he can make it. "And something to make the rest lie smooth."

"Maybe Lancelot's pomade?" Amrit suggests, holding up a tin of the stuff, and Harry grins victoriously and nods. The grin doesn't leave him as he shepherds Eggsy into the dove-grey suit with a lavender shirt that Jeremy sent with an apprentice on the bullet train; the suit is a little too tight across Eggsy's shoulders, the lapels are a touch too wide, and the shirt stays undone at the top without a tie. Eggsy moves as directed, not even protesting when Harry gives him brogues to finish off his ensemble. Harry surveys him from top to toe, approving: Eggsy looks beautiful and _touchable_ , like someone intimately acquainted with other men's bedrooms. 

His own suit, of course, fits him like a glove – Kingsman's bulletproof silk-wool blend, single-breasted with peaked lapels and a Milanese buttonhole. The silk of his supposed pocket square is in actuality a set of zip ties, a gift from Owen he's been longing to try out. Eggsy whistles when he sees him. Harry makes no reply, instead leading him to the plane, conscious of Eggsy's eyes tracking his musculature and the way his arse must be showing to advantage in these trousers.

"After you, Gary, my boy."

"Ugh, this again," Eggsy says, but boards the plane as he's bid, tips a friendly nod to Stephen in the pilot's seat, and settles down to study his tablet.

Eggsy reacts far more beautifully to the endearment – or is it a term of control, a means of reminding Gary that he is the one who's been bought – when they are in Paris, mingling with wealthy men who think of V-Day as a demonstration of natural selection writ large and immediate, an event that wiped all of their rival predators off the map. They believe it is their right to fill that vacuum. "Go play, dear boy," Harry – Alexander Crawford for the night – directs with a pat on Gary's taut arse, and Gary goes without a murmur. Whatever the epithet means, it's a well-chosen one, as the salient characteristic of Eggsy's new companions is their youth; their average age looks to be about twenty. Or perhaps it is their hunger, the scared and scrambling look in their eyes that hasn't left despite selling themselves to the highest bidders.

Eggsy manages to blend right in, and Harry is far from blind to his appeal, even like this, desperate and not too proud to be pragmatic. It should be a sobering thought, but all he can see is Eggsy, who made his way into Kingsman on skills so formidable that even his unexpected compassion could not hinder him. 

Harry tunes back into the discussion of global politics, offering his shallow observations of the direction in which most Asian countries – hit just as hard as Europe and the Americas despite the time difference because of their overcrowded major cities – are moving. Tobacco is not one of Alexander Crawford's vices, so when the living stereotypes by whom he's surrounded decide on a cigar break, he moves away and snaps his fingers for Gary, who really should be more attentive. 

"Yes, sir?" Gary asks, nicely tentative.

"Join me in a drink," Alexander commands, shooing him over to the bar.

The only other boy in the group joins him, apparently engaged on the same errand. "Your man's a bit of a bastard, isn't he?" the boy asks, quietly enough that Harry has to strain to hear him.

"Not really mine," Gary says, flustered and uncertain what to bring Alexander. "This's all new t' me."

"This tastes shite, but it's been in an oak barrel for longer'n we've been alive, which apparently makes it God's gift to wankers," the boy counsels. "Jus' bring 'im tha'."

"Cheers," Gary says, relief unknotting his shoulders. "What I wouldn' give for a pint down the pub."

"When y'r back in South London, look me up at my local," the boy says, leaning in. He's summoned by his master before he can share any details. Eggsy holds a glass in each hand and weaves his way through the overcrowded room to Harry.

Alexander makes Gary sit on his lap and keeps one dominant hand on the back of his neck so Gary can't even throw back his drink, has to take it in in small sips that mean he tastes every unpleasant mouthful. "Good boy," Alexander says, not modulating the conversational volume of his voice, and Gary blushes, his throat and face pinking instantly, and his eyes, which should be demurely down, dart around to see who heard him being put in his place. Eggsy is really very good at this.

"Sir?" the boy is back. "Would you care to join the others?"

"Certainly," Alexander assents, only allowing Gary to climb off his lap before resting a proprietary hand on his backside. "The sooner we're done, the better; I have better things to do tonight." Gary's shame is too profound to allow him to react with more than a blink. The boy carefully sees none of it.

Gary leans in, dropping his voice. "How much longer _are_ they gonna go, you think?" The boy says nothing; Harry, glancing back, sees his careless shrug. "Ain't it your man runnin' this thing?" Gary presses.

"'E runs a lotta things," the boy evades, and Harry knows that Eggsy's found the right target for his side of the mission. Any details he can glean about Timothy Masters-Murray will be useful in dismantling this ring and any side lines he's got running.

The man himself is difficult to deal with on his own. He's paying little attention to what the others are proposing – fair enough, they are singularly idiotic, as Harry finds because he does have to pay attention – and looking instead at Eggsy and his own boy, huddled confidingly close. "Delicious. Leave him here for me," Masters-Murray proposes, leaning his muscled bulk in Harry's direction. "You can find twenty more like him in the first London pub you see."

"I've taken the time to find this one," Alexander drawls as though his hand were not clenched tight around his glass. "Why should I give him up, if you find him so commonplace?"

"He's got the real London flavour, and I work out of Paris now." Harry's confused; surely the boy had intimated that he – and presumably his master – would be back in London before long. "I would take it as a great favour, Crawford." Masters-Murray is a disgusting cretin, which is all that matters, and Harry wants to cut out his eyes for even looking at Eggsy.

"Depriving me of companionship for the journey home is more than a mere favour," Alexander says pointedly, body tensing. Harry can feel himself giving in to Alexander's uneasiness just as if he and Eggsy were not more than capable of handling the situation; he needs to think rationally instead of picturing Eggsy, as helpless as he's made himself look, at the mercy of this merciless man. Over his glasses comm, Falstaff says, "Situation escalating, be advised," which he bloody well knows from his own quickening pulse.

He looks across the room, his eyes needing to take in the sight of his partner. Eggsy is working without a camera, without a handler's voice in his ear or words on his glasses, and he is speaking to the boy who has probably been more Masters-Murray's victim than accomplice; it is no wonder he looks upset. Harry knows all this, knows Eggsy has no idea he's being bargained over, but cannot keep from baring his teeth. Falstaff hisses, "Stand down, Galahad! Stand down!"

Before Harry can decide whether to let his brain or his body take charge, there's a shout from across the room and the boy Eggsy's been talking with has grabbed a gun from one of the security guards posted around the room. "Mick, mate," Gary says nervously, "you don' wanna be wavin' that around." The rest of the guards have drawn on the boy, and Harry's heart leaps into his throat when he sees that Eggsy has stepped up to Mick's side. "C'mon, mate, you don' hafta do this, _any_ o' this," Eggsy says, gesturing at the gathering.

Mick's mouth opens helplessly, on a sob or a denunciation, but the guards are too quick for him. He and Eggsy both go down, struck by bullets, and all Harry can do is remember that Eggsy's suit was pulled off a mannequin and wasn't made of bulletproof fabric. He thinks he hears, as if from far away, a voice that's somehow right in his ear shouting, "Agent down! Agent down!"

*

He cannot bear the thought of Eggsy, his consort battleship, lying still and pale and bandaged in the same bed he occupied for endless weeks in the Kingsman infirmary. He does not know how his darling had borne it, sitting next to the bed, hope and despair both insistent weights dragging him down. Eggsy has no business being so immobile and silent. "Harry," he hears, and his heart gives a thump as his eyes dart to Eggsy's face though he knows that the voice wasn't his. "Harry, come away, please."

He goes. Arthur asks what happened, what Kingsman needs to know that wouldn't have shown up on the feed from his glasses. There is nothing, because Harry had ignored his training, his instincts, and his reason; all of it disappeared because Eggsy was in the room, in danger to which he had agreed to be exposed. Arthur's familiar face dims a little when he realises the severity of Harry's lapse, and he passes Harry to Owen, waiting in line. Owen is incisive rather than kind, and everything he says – that Harry is not used to working with another knight, that Eggsy's trained to work both singly and jointly – all boils down to one thing: Harry will never again go on a mission partnered by Eggsy.

If anyone can keep Eggsy safe from him, it's Owen. He nods his unstinting agreement. It's only Owen's hands on his face that force his head to stop moving. "Heretic," Owen says, and Harry thinks vaguely that they have had this conversation before, "that boy loves you. He'll not want to wake to see you've hurt yourself." That's true, but Harry knows any number of people who will hurt him if he only asks; chances are, they'll make it worse if they know he's asking because he failed Eggsy. 

Owen shakes him, derailing that train of thought. Owen's little fingers are just touching the shaved-clean nape of his neck, where he'd got rid of the curls Eggsy particularly liked. "I'm saying, take care of yourself. Eggsy is happiest when you're healthy and sane." What are the odds of that being the case? He was lost long before Eggsy was born, and not even his sweetheart's determined love can put him on that shining path. "For me, then. Sit with him, watch over him, rest – for me."

He had no idea, that Owen wouldn't play fair. He goes.

Roxanne is standing by Eggsy's bed and holding his hand; Harry tries to remember when she was supposed to fly to South America but cannot quite manage. Roxanne is speaking to Eggsy as if they are having a normal conversation under the most mundane circumstances. "And I spoke to your mother, told her what was happening. She'd need to find someone to watch Daisy in order to be able to visit you, and it doesn't look like that's going to be possible any time soon." Harry can hear the note of tension in her voice when she speaks of Michelle Baker; he is reminded that he is not the only one who sees her for what she is. "Anjali wants me to give you a kiss from her, but I'm not sharing. She said she'll make you anything you want to eat the minute you're well enough to ask for it." She jiggles his hand a little. "When you wake up, Eggsy, please be all the way better. Merlin is unravelling without you. Daisy needs her big bruv." She leans down and kisses his brow. "I miss you. You'd better be yourself by the time I'm back." She turns to leave, not seeing him, and Harry is impressed that her voice stayed so steady when her eyes were full of tears.

He's found the mission report – Stephen's and Falstaff's words instead of his because he still doesn't know how he let the simplest possible mission spiral so disastrously out of control – and braces himself to read what happened. Eggsy had his mobile recording and transmitting everything the boy – Mick – was saying, and what Mick was saying was enough to get Desdemona and Orlando started on rooting out every nasty secret Timothy Masters-Murray thought would never see the light of day. Mick was sharp, saw enough to piece together how bad a man he was bound to, and was growing more and more hysterical at the thought of Masters-Murray's becoming even more powerful as the head of a consortium; Mick, damaged irreparably by the losses he'd sustained on V-Day, had been ready to sacrifice his own life to stop him. 

It was Harry's unreasonable growling possessiveness over Eggsy that had kept him from being Galahad – he hadn't seen any of the warning glances Eggsy must have shot him, he hadn't heard Falstaff when she was trying to apprise him of what Mick was saying – and so Eggsy had had to act alone, trying to shield a boy brave enough to try to right a wrong. Even after the guards had fired, Harry had been useless; Falstaff had called in Stephen, who'd used the guards' distraction as cover to release a mist of some incapacitating agent and then got Eggsy, Mick, and Harry back to HQ. Mick had died en route. Eggsy would have to be told once he woke from his post-surgery sleep.

He stops reading. He can't think of where he should be, but he knows that leaving Eggsy alone with him cannot be right. Before anyone can ask him to go, he leaves.

*

 _Gaheris is awake._ The message on his glasses is brief and without attribution; Harry cannot tell who sent it or how long it has been waiting for him to read it. It does not go on to say _he's asking for you_ but he finds he cannot stay away.

He stops short, out of sight, when he hears the voices coming from Eggsy's room – Michelle Baker is in her son's room, along with Owen and Daisy. It is not a grouping that he has ever anticipated, and he sneaks a little closer, needing to see. Owen is sitting in the bedside chair holding Daisy, whose hands are wrapped in her brother's; Eggsy is smiling at her despite his bruised face and kissing at her little hands, and Michelle is standing on his other side, arranging a large bouquet of Gerbera daisies in a round glass vase entirely unsuited to such long stems. Harry ducks back, pressing his back against the wall; he got lucky with that one, and he'll have to time his peeks carefully to avoid being spotted by Owen or Eggsy.

"Look, Daisy," Michelle is saying, her voice brightly determined, "it's Eggsy, alrigh'? Here's your big bruv, jus' like you wanted."

"Ezzy!" Daisy says. She must be squirming to get to him, because the next voice Harry hears is Owen's.

"Nay, lass, Eggsy can't hold you just now. Can you blow him a kiss?" A popping sound, most likely Daisy following Owen's lead and clapping a hand over her mouth and lifting it again, ensues. Why has Eggsy said nothing?

"Mum." That rasping croak cannot be Eggsy's voice. "'m gonna be alrigh'. Soon." Harry's dimly grateful for whatever Michelle has done – gasped and clapped both hands over her face, most likely – because the noise of it covers his own throat's involuntary sound as his legs buckle beneath him. He sinks to the ground and wraps his arms around his shins and presses his face to his knees, seeking darkness. Eggsy is hurt because of him, Eggsy can't hold his sister or comfort his mother because Harry failed to act like the trained agent he has been for thirty years and more.

"I know, babe, I know," Michelle whispers. "'Ere, give 'er to me." A smacking kiss – most likely against Daisy's cheek, given the volume, as proxy for the kiss her son is too bruised to bear. "You're my good boy, always been my good boy. See, Daisy, see Eggsy being so brave?" A wet sniff, which Harry echoes more quietly against his trousers. "When can 'e come home? Or is it better for 'im to stay here?"

"I'm not a doctor, but I'll let you know as soon as the medical team makes their recommendation," Owen says. "Call me, day or night, if you want to visit again, and I'll make the arrangements."

"That Rafael gave me 'is number too, said the same," Michelle says quietly. "All you bendin' over backwards for him, 's nice."

"It's what he deserves," Owen corrects her. 

"O –" Eggsy protests, and Daisy chimes in, joyously declaring, "O, Ezzy!"

"I know, ducks, it's Uncle O," Eggsy agrees, rough voice softening the merest bit.

"You need your rest, love," Michelle says, and Harry scrambles to untangle the knot of his limbs so he can move out of sight. There is an empty examination room two doors down the corridor, and he waits in its darkness to hear the sounds of Michelle's brisk footsteps and Daisy's babbling die away. 

There's a suspicious lack of activity in the corridor – the nurses that Eggsy has charmed on his countless previous visits should be thronging at his door, desperate to bring him as many little luxuries as he'll accept – but Harry takes the gift and sinks back down to his former position on the floor.

"How's Mick?" is the first thing Eggsy asks.

"Mick didn't make it, lad," Owen answers. "I'm sorry."

"You ain't the one sh'd be sorry." Harry is well aware of his manifold failings, but was hoping against hope that Eggsy would continue to be generous in his estimation of him. "We ge' enough on that bastard to bring 'im down, then?"

"Oh, yes," Owen says, satisfaction tingeing his voice. "On that score you need have no worries. It will take some time, but Timothy Masters-Murray will get what's coming to him, Eggsy. All of the men at the meeting will."

There's a long silence. "'Ow's Harry?" Eggsy rasps.

"Feeling like the idiot he acted." Harry feels like he's been hit in the face with a cricket bat; Owen has never sugar-coated his words, but this bluntness is new. "Sorry, lad, drink this." There's a sound of water being poured from a jug into a tumbler, and Harry can picture them, silver with the Kingsman logo debossed on each. He can visualise, even more clearly, Owen holding the cup to Eggsy's swollen mouth and Eggsy's shaking hand carefully not touching Owen even as he tries to take the cup himself to show just how well he's doing. "Harry's fine, mostly. He got a bit bruised during his extraction, minimal enough that a hot shower should have set him to rights, particularly in the over-indulgent bath that bloody hedonist installed." That startles a scraped-sounding laugh out of Eggsy. "Sorry. But he put you both in danger in Paris, letting his emotions replace his training, and he knows it."

"Fuck. How long'll it be 'fore he comes 'round?"

"I've been friends with Harry – real friends, he carried me when I was broken – for forty years, and I've never seen him like he is with you." Harry swallows around the lump in his throat and hears only silence. Eggsy must be mutely asking for clarification – Harry knows for a fucking fact that Owen can no more resist those pleading eyes than he can – because Owen elucidates, "Not muddled, just happy. In love. This is his turn to be broken, he's just coming to it late, and between us we'll carry him, lad; we won't let him run."

"I'm still 'ere, and I ain't lettin' 'im get away wi' _shit_." Harry cannot tell if he's imagining that Eggsy's voice is getting stronger and smoother the more he talks; if Eggsy's spelling out every detail of the arse-kicking he plans to give Harry is what it takes for him to achieve the mellifluousness he had of old, Harry is willing to listen to his bloodthirstiness until the cows come home.

Owen's laugh cuts abruptly off when Eggsy says, "Nor you, neither." Harry takes a chance and peeks in. Eggsy's sitting up straight, cloud-soft pillows littering his bed with only one still behind him. "Don' think I din' notice the guilty face you pull ev'ry time you see my mum. Is _all_ o' bloody Kingsman hung up on her?" Harry watches Eggsy crumple. "Don' say you've only been lookin' out f'r me 'cause o' my dad. Couldn' take it from you too."

Harry pulls back, unable to watch any longer, though perfectly willing to torture himself by recalling the coldness of his words on that godforsaken day and waiting to hear how Owen will prove how much better a man he is than Harry. 

"I'm glad to know you, Eggsy. Full stop. You bring joy into my life." Owen has always been good with words, even simple ones; Harry can feel his own heart rising like that declaration was for him. "But there's no denying I let Lee down, lad."

"How?" Eggsy challenges, and Harry has the ugly realisation that he's never told Eggsy exactly what happened on that day eighteen years ago, and Owen, surely thinking Harry had taken care of it, could not have covered a breach of which he was unaware. "All I heard is that Dad stepped up an' sacrificed himself for a bunch o' Kingsmen."

"I was there. The Lancelot trials were technically over, but it was down to your dad and a man called James Littleford, and in lieu of any other set tests, Harry and I took the two candidates on an active mission. We had a hostage who pulled the pin on a grenade. James did the proper thing and took cover. Harry started forward, but your dad, he did the noble thing and pushed Harry aside and fell on the grenade himself."

"Where were you?" Eggsy's voice is quiet, like he's hugging to himself the idea of his dad being so selfless, the hero of his son's dreams. 

"Behind them. I didn't see a thing until Lee was dead."

"So how's it your fault, then?"

"I trained him, trained all of the recruits since I joined Kingsman as Merlin. And I trained him just the same as I trained James, when I should have seen Lee was different. Not lower-class. Ready to believe in what he was doing, fully engaging that big heart as well as his big brain. Showing someone that noble how to destroy himself and then giving him a reason – that's unconscionable. And I did it all over again with you, keeping you as one of us even after you failed the dog test." Owen sighs. "So I'm aware of how much I've taken from your mother."

Eggsy sounds spitting mad when he finally speaks. "O, you're th' best person I know. Sounds like my dad woulda been it if he'd lived, but he din' – he chose to save three other people – and so you're it. Dunno who else woulda trained all the candidates an' been _kind_ about it. Kingsman's bloody lucky it were you and not some power-hungry nutter at the helm all this time, shaping all the knights from Harry on down. Weren't your fault Dad was wired to jump forward when you trained 'im to jump back, and it ain't you who took anything from mum. Clear?" Eggsy is good with words too, and Harry, to his shame, has never put together the simplest of sentences – _I love you_ – for either of them. He does, though, he truly does.

Harry hears a lot of throat-clearing and sniffling; trusting that they will be too busy to look anywhere but at each other, he pokes his head around the door jamb again and sees Owen leaning forward to kiss Eggsy's temple. Eggsy doesn't push, doesn't reach for Owen, but he does say, "Love you too," and Owen smiles at him, looking twenty years younger.

"So, tell me," Owen says, sitting back and actually putting his feet on the bed just by Eggsy's hip, "what was that you said about all of Kingsman being hung up on your mother?"

Eggsy laughs briefly but shakes his head. "Ain't a joke, guv. Mention my mum in front o' Harry or Roxy and they both look like there ain't no word a toff should know that'd describe her properly." Harry slinks backward, trying to stay silent. "'S like they blame 'er for Dean an' all the shit he rained down on us." Harry cannot quite parse this outraged statement; of course Michelle is to blame for Dean, as she is the one who opened her bed and her son's home to the cretin. "I _tol'_ Harry, Dean's like a poison. Wouldn' blame someone for gettin' sick, righ'? So why blame her for what he done?" Eggsy sniffs. "Love o' her life jus' died, all heroic 'cordin to you lot, an' he oozed in an' poisoned 'er. She did the best she c'd."

Owen chooses his words carefully. "I doubt they mean to cast aspersions on her; they only want you to know how much they care about you and dislike that you were in the situation her relationship with Baker put you in."

Eggsy is too stubborn for anyone's good, Harry's least of all. "It was shit, but we got Daisy out of it at least."

"And you got both her and your mother out of it, Eggsy."

"Yeah, I did." There's raw satisfaction in Eggsy's voice, and Harry, seriously vexed that he still doesn't know what Eggsy did to ensure Baker's disappearance from their lives, lets out a frustrated sound. He closes his eyes and when he looks up, Owen is looming above him.

Owen looks at him, crumpled on the cold floor that has not been kind to his back, and says only, "Come along, Heretic. Don't keep your good man waiting."

*

Eggsy's wearing a flower crown. The sight is so unexpected that Harry's mind skips over the other surprise – that Eggsy is in his house and not his own – entirely. In a flower crown, Eggsy looks like the god of spring, but of course, without the crown, Harry thinks Eggsy just looks like a god, full stop.

"Hello, love," Eggsy says cheerfully, lounging decoratively on Harry's sofa. His skin has darkened and his hair has brightened from lying on a Goan beach, where he's spent weeks tracking smugglers' patterns. Harry has been climbing the walls without him.

"Hello, my darling," Harry says, heading for the sofa for what is meant to be a decorous kiss of greeting. It turns far less proper when Eggsy tugs on his tie and Harry folds his legs to sit on Eggsy's lap, his knees flush with Eggsy's snaky hips.

"You's like origami," Eggsy says nonsensically. "How you even bend legs that long?"

"Practice," Harry says, smirking unnecessarily because he knows the sight will spur Eggsy on to further demonstrations of ardour.

"Herrick Lesley Hart," Eggsy mock-admonishes, and there's the smirk gone from Harry's face as if it never were. "Had a bet with O that I c'd beat your marksmanship score, your time on the obstacle course, or your time in the 200 metres individual medley."

"Which did you choose?" Harry asks, pushing his arse more firmly against the reassuring and arousing solidity of Eggsy's thighs; the time on the beach has allowed him to recuperate fully after the Paris mission. Eggsy flexes in response.

"All three, love. Three victories, three prizes, an' your proper name was jus' one."

Harry shudders to think what the other two were, given that Owen knows all of his secrets and Eggsy insists on getting full value for prizes he's earned. He looks down at Eggsy, whose eyes are shining grass-green under the vines and tea roses of his absurd circlet. "Tell me you asked for my name while you were still dripping from the pool."

Eggsy, his lovely love, blushes at that, like he's still the virgin Harry ravished months ago. "Mmmmaybe." Harry leans in to kiss the corner of his eye but the crown gets in the way. Eggsy pulls it off – "Daisy liked it" – and tosses it across the room with a decisive snap of his wrist. "Now was you gonna kiss me or wha'?"

"Was I? Or was I going to call Owen and tell him to start running for spilling my terrible secrets?" Harry teases. To his surprise, Eggsy's face falls and his hands drop to Harry's hips like he's itching to shift him off his lap. Harry goes before he has to face the rejection of being moved. "What's wrong?"

Eggsy musters up a half-hearted smile. "Nothin'. Should go, wanna catch up wi' Dais."

Harry checks his wristwatch. "Surely she's asleep by now?"

"Teethin's brutal, Harry. On all of us."

"Please tell me what's wrong."

"I –" Eggsy hesitates. "No, nothin'. I'm happy, it's nothin'."

This is beyond frustrating, that he's trying to talk Eggsy out of his professed happiness. They still have not had it out over so many things: their fight before Kentucky, the mutual antipathy between Harry and Michelle, that Eggsy has settled for fucking Harry while knowing that Owen, a better man, loves him too. It could be all of it or none of it, and Harry wants to break out of at least one stalemate, so he pushes. "It's obviously something, dearest, and I'd prefer to address it sooner rather than later."

Eggsy's face hasn't closed off as it does on missions – Harry thrills to that, the knowledge that even ticked, Eggsy feels safe enough with him to let his emotions show – and so Harry can see that Eggsy is tiptoeing forward, airing only the smallest of his grievances. "Why ain't you ever tol' me your name before? I been callin' you Harry 'cause I thought that were it."

It's so inconsequential that Harry laughs. "I've hated my name since birth, and when I finally shortened 'Herrick' to 'Harry' it felt so right that I think of it as my real name. After all, you go by 'Eggsy' –"

"But you knew it were 'Gary' legally before . . . before all of it. _You_ knew, din' need no one else to tell you."

"Darling, I only want you to moan 'Harry' when we're in bed, nothing else," he says, turning Eggsy's head for a kiss. Eggsy lets him do as he will, and Harry, unused to such disinterested acquiescence without exuberant reciprocation, pulls back. "What?" he asks, more sharply than he intends.

Eggsy's face colours profoundly; whichever eye Harry looks through, the red is overwhelming. "I love you, Harry, bu' . . ." he shrugs instead of finishing the sentence.

Harry panics and blurts out what he's been meaning to say for far too long. "I love you!"

Eggsy smiles rather too miserably to calm Harry's errant heart. "But it ain't easy. Got you on one side an' everyone else on the other."

"What does that mean?"

"You ain't int'rested in fittin' in wi' Mum an' Dais, or Rox, or any part o' my life 'cept where you are already. An' you ain't makin' room in yours for me, neither."

It's such a comprehensive blow that Harry just sits there, stunned. Eggsy keeps going, the words flowing now that the dam has been broken. "I can't know your name, don' know nothin' 'bout your family, there's no room in this house for anythin' 'cept your fuck-ugly stuff that I don' get. Don' know where you think I fit, aside from your bed, an' y' don' ever ask me to stay. You hate my mum, hate Rox jus' for bein' my friend, ain't got time for my sister. I don't know, Harry."

It's quite the litany, and there's not one part Harry can rightfully dispute, but he's willing to play dirty since it is Eggsy on the line. "I have not always been fond of the women in your life, but to say that I hate them is overstepping the mark." Only by a hair's breadth, but still; there is hurt shining in Eggsy's eyes but his darling is doing him the courtesy of listening. "I will attempt to repair my relationships with your mother and Roxanne, and to build one with Daisy." Before Eggsy can ask for details, he presses on. "As for my life, darling, haven't you realised I didn't have much of one before you, Kingsman aside? Parents I never got on with, who left me to be raised by the wolves – by which I mean headmasters and the other little brutes my age. You already know the only one who mattered; you were quicker to see his worth than I was. Do you know what he called you once? My Anthea."

Eggsy's mouth is trembling but he smiles. "Like the poem?"

"Like the poem. Because you 'may command me anything.'" It is true, he realises. "The rest is my own hurt that you have so many claims on your heart, when I wanted you to be all mine the way I am entirely yours." He blinks in surprise at the words that have tumbled, unbidden, out of his own mouth.

"Y' ain't, though," Eggsy counters, swinging a leg over to sit on Harry's lap. His warm hand is hooking into Harry's hair, drawing him down. "You're Owen's, too." Eggsy waits for the justice of this statement to work its way into his disobliging brain before kissing him. Eggsy's mouth is deliciously soft, moulding to Harry's cooperatively, and Harry is reminded anew of all that he holds when Eggsy is in his arms.

"I do love you, Eggsy," he says.

"That's good to hear," Eggsy says, nipping at his lips. "But d'you really love all this stuff?" He gestures with a contemptuous sweep of his arm at all of the adornments Harry has inherited or gathered.

"No," he admits, "but, baby steps, sweetheart."

"Your ridiculous study first, then. All that shite you spouted 'bout gennelmen and modesty, then Hemingway and superiority, when that room's a shrine to your sense o' superiority, just in code." Eggsy draws back when Harry stiffens. "Coulda been more tactful 'bout that. Still love me?"

The thing is, he isn't wrong. Harry had put up the first headline, choosing _The Sun_ for its bottom-feeder hyperbole, as a way to assure himself that being a Kingsman was enough, that he did not require the adulation of the masses he was saving. Now that he has Eggsy, he knows it isn't; now that he has Eggsy, the room is revealed to be a hollow monument to his own vanity. "I do." He might as well admit it. "Owen hates that room too."

"Ain't you learned by now he's never wrong?"

"I'm a bit slow, apparently."

"Y' move fast enough for me," Eggsy says, with a kiss so delightfully filthy Harry loses the plot entirely.

*

Owen always splashes out for his birthday, and Harry's not quite sure what to expect this year. For his fiftieth, it was a specially bound, single-volume copy of _The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick_ , the pages gilded to fit with what Owen was pleased to call his "fucking terrible aesthetic"; Harry loves it unironically and has given it pride of place on the presentation stand that used to hold the Pemberley edition of _Butterflies of Europe and Neighbouring Regions_. The birthday coming up, however, is not a milestone – fifty-three has no particular romance attached to it – and it is the first year he's had a lover who could talk Owen into all sorts of mischief on his behalf, especially now that he knows how alike they are, how dissimilar to Harry. Right. Best to corner Owen now and get a hint of what's to come.

He finds Merlin engaged in tracking four discrete missions simultaneously, and settles in to wait. Eggsy's salt lamp is shining on two new pictures from Daisy, and if he squints he can pretend to see a pattern in one; the other is utterly beyond explanation. Roxanne is standing behind him when he gives up and turns away, and, remembering his promise to Eggsy, he smiles at her.

She smiles back. "Has Eggsy roped you in, then?" she asks.

He studies her pretty face but sees no trickery there; still, he's glad to have solved the mystery of her perfect hair and used it for his own gain. "Into what?" he asks.

"Daisy's birthday is next week, and Eggsy wanted our ideas. We'll be the ones at the party, after all, might as well make it enjoyable for ourselves as well as the birthday girl."

Presumably, all of Michelle's friends are either unwelcome by virtue of being Baker's or dead like Eggsy's own. "What day is her birthday?"

Roxanne pulls out her mobile, presumably checking the calendar. "Friday next."

As is his own, and Harry watches his plan of keeping Eggsy in his bed for as close as he can get to the full twenty-four hours disappear with a taunting flicker. "Wonderful," he says, and Roxanne nods seriously. "What does she like?" Do children that young even have likes and dislikes? She must be turning two, which means she was only a few days past one when Eggsy went on his joyride and landed in Holborn Police Station; Eggsy must have been fed up to the back teeth to have lost control with his sister at such a vulnerable age.

"As of last week, the colour orange and clouds. The only permanent likes are her mum, Eggsy, and JB."

"She liked grapes when I last fed her," he says, carefully skirting round the fact that he's only fed her – or interacted with her, really – the once.

Eggsy jogs in, already calling out apologies. "Sorry, sorry, these Kay candidates can barely handle the track, le' alone the obstacle course. Had to wait an' keep 'em from gettin' tangled in the ropes an' left overnigh'." It's clear he thinks such an overnight ordeal would instil some much-needed toughness in the candidates, and from what Harry remembers of the group, he agrees. "Glad you're back safe an' sound from Dalian, pet," he says to Roxanne, moving to embrace her.

Harry's surprised when she looks at him and eels away, twisting so she can hug Eggsy from behind instead. Eggsy, confused, turns to look at her face before following her gaze, and the way he brightens when he sees Harry makes Harry feel like there's a lit candle in his chest. "What you doin' here, love?" he asks, testing the strength of Roxanne's hold on him and deciding it's loose enough for a quick kiss on Harry's jaw.

"Harry's helping," Roxanne – Roxy, he supposes he should call her now that their truce is evidently on – says.

"Yeah?" Eggsy asks, beaming at him, and Harry cannot believe how hopeless his darling must have felt to have burst out before, when it takes so little to light him up into this glowing contentment.

"Harry's quite the little helper," Owen says, hiding his taunting grin in a mug of milk with a dash of coffee. Harry narrows his eyes at him and Owen looks back, all innocence.

"We'll need balloons," Harry says, gesturing loftily for Owen to take down his pearls of wisdom on his ubiquitous tablet.

"With a helium tank?" Roxy asks, disengaging from Eggsy to face Owen.

"Shit, let's jus' get the Kay candidates to blow up the balloons, 's 'bout all the physical exertion they's up for anyway," Eggsy says, rolling his eyes even as he slides an arm about Harry's waist. "Plain balloons is fine."

"We could do orange crepe-paper streamers," Roxy says, and Eggsy points an approving finger at her. "Plus Anjali says she can make whatever kind of cake you want."

"Prob'ly fairy cakes so we c'n decorate 'em," Eggsy says.

"Does she still like butterflies?" Owen asks. Eggsy nods. "Harry, if you could sketch one of your favourite specimens, I could make wings for the wee lass to wear." Eggsy nods more fervently, as if he's the one who'll get to wear them. He'd do it, too, just to make his sister smile, and Harry squeezes him tightly.

"You c'n sketch?" Eggsy murmurs into his chest, and Harry gets the feeling this is the kind of thing Eggsy's happy to discover rather than dismayed not to have known.

"Owen's definition of the word is very generous to include what I can do," Harry says truthfully. Owen is just helping him make Eggsy happy, and Harry will take all the help he can get.

*

Owen is laying out all the necessary materials for the wings – he has enough for more than one pair, Harry notes suspiciously and resolves not to accept any as his birthday present – on the dining-room table and opposite him, Harry is preparing to polish all of his silverware. Harry remembers this time to open some windows, so that the two of them are not subject to the noxious fumes of the polish. Owen's tablet buzzes a notification, and Harry, struggling with the last window, hears him laugh at whatever has popped up.

"What is it?" he asks.

Owen wordlessly hands the tablet over. There's an image taking up most of the screen, but Harry can make neither heads nor tails of it; only the line of type at the bottom of the screen tells him he's viewing the image right side up. Is it a plant of some kind, with waving fronds, or perhaps some raw silk, unspindled and waiting to be woven into a new kind of protective fabric? Owen's amused face is offering no clues, so Harry reads the caption. _First thing you see when your man's got legs like stilts and the hair of the gods. Envy me._ It's a message from Eggsy to Owen, and the image is evidently of _him_ , his disastrous curls that determinedly inch away from his scalp while he sleeps. Eggsy had stopped by that morning with JB, needing to get back to his house with the wrapping paper his mother had sent him to buy but wanting to see him, and Harry, overcome with desire for him, had pressed Eggsy against the wall with his hips and moved his glasses from the bridge of his freckled nose to the top of his head so that they wouldn't get smudged by fervent kisses. Eggsy had responded, startled laughs turning into appreciative moans, but then had evidently gone home and pulled this still from the recording his glasses made; Harry cannot decide whether he should be punished for his cheekiness or bribed for the full audio-visual recording.

"It's you," Harry says. "You made this possible, with your clever inventions."

Owen snorts and rewards himself with a long sip of his terrible milky coffee. "Guilty as charged, m'lord." Harry watches three shortbread rounds disappear in the blink of an eye. "I'd rather see your demonic morning locks than Caradoc's jiggly arse when he's on a honeypot."

Harry makes a face and takes a biscuit for himself. "You never told me why you made them." The fallout from Robbins's assumption of the credit is crystal-clear in his memory, but the dawning of the idea was never known to him.

Owen swirls the last of his coffee, looking into the depths of the oversized pottery mug that's reserved for him. "D'you really not know?" Harry shakes his head and though Owen's eyes are still down, he must still sense the movement. "Merlin – Edmund Charles – approached me when I won Trinity's Year 12 Linguistics comp." Harry shakes his head again, this time in disbelief. "He said he wanted to set me some problems and see how I did. I was expecting something completely theoretical, but Merlin had that quartermaster's blood, and insisted that I should be able to make anything I dreamt up." Owen is looking at him now, so kindly. "The glasses were a response to a challenge as to how to track a knight and communicate with him in real time, and there you were, Heretic, the perfect knight."

No, that can't be right. Kingsman came for him – he can still remember the exulting avarice on Gawain's face when Harry began to smile his acceptance – and he's the one who brought Owen into the fold. And he only became the perfect knight because of those Trinity years, when he learnt the pleasures of the world and therefore the stakes of the work he'd be doing. "No," he denies flatly despite its eminent plausibility; Owen had paved the way for him, had been so much of a prize that Kingsman had gone clumsy in recruiting Harry, desperate to keep Owen happy.

"Yes," Owen counters. "You were bright and ambitious but at loose ends, and I could see, could make Merlin see, that Kingsman was the best outlet for your energies and talents. And I got to keep my best friend."

That friendship was at the heart of it – did it matter if he'd followed Owen or Owen had followed him? – and had been the making of him. "Still do," Owen said quietly, his eyes shining, and Harry hears all the unspoken words about the worth of the work that they've done, together.

*

Daisy is wearing the wings of a Banded Orange – and Eggsy is wearing the wings of a Buckeye – when she crashes into Harry's shins, her brother, chasing after her, narrowly avoiding a second collision, though one Harry would not mind nearly as much. Daisy looks stunned after her close encounter with Harry's knees, and Eggsy deftly scoops her up before she can begin crying. From the lofty height of Eggsy's arms, she can see much of the handkerchief-sized garden, decorated in her honour and full of Kingsmen and their kin. Jeremy's daughter appears to be leading Stephen's twin sons a merry dance.

"Up! Ezzy, up!" she pleads, and Eggsy offers her to Harry.

"Harry c'n get you higher, ducks."

She's immediately shy, face buried in Eggsy's neck, but she's peeking in a way that tells Harry she's interested. He's not sure he's equipped to carry a child, but Eggsy has been incandescent all day and he knows he'll do nothing to dim that glow. He holds out his arms and Daisy cautiously climbs into them, one hand still fisted in Eggsy's thin blue shirt.

"High," Daisy breathes when she looks up, stretching out the other pudgy hand as if she can touch the streamers Harry had hung earlier under Michelle's prickly supervision.

"Very good," Harry says stiltedly, and Daisy twists to look at him, studying him with wide eyes, bluer than her brother's. "Those _are_ high up." Daisy appears to be trying to hypnotise him, judging by her unblinking gaze. "Happy birthday, Daisy," he says.

"Yes, happy birthday, lass," Owen says, striding over, and Daisy squeals and leaps for him. Owen catches her easily. "And to you, too, Heretic."

Harry finds his arms full once again, as Eggsy has muscled his way in and pressed a kiss to his jaw. "It's your birthday too, love? Shoulda said." Eggsy looks up at him, promise written all over his lovely face, and Harry dips his head down to kiss the tip of his nose. "Many happy returns an' all that."

"What does 'all that' entail?" Harry asks, sounding exactly as prurient as he feels.

Eggsy heaves the sigh of the hard done by. "I'd say don' dirty up a two-year-old's birthday party, love, but you gotta be you."

He's better tonight than he was a year ago, and he'll be better still once Eggsy's back at Stanhope Mews with him and they can christen the study, stripped of all its gaudy headlines; Eggsy will look far better up against the wall in any case, Harry's treasure and tyrant.

"Careful how much leeway you afford him, lad; he'll take a mile," Owen warns over his shoulder as he walks away, Daisy directing his hunt for the last fairy cake.

"Don' I know it," Eggsy says into Harry's chest, but Harry can feel him smiling against his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a famously opaque line from _Hamlet_.
> 
> (1) [Caravaggio's _Doubting Thomas_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredulity_of_Saint_Thomas_\(Caravaggio\)#/media/File:Caravaggio_-_The_Incredulity_of_Saint_Thomas.jpg)
> 
> (2) [the song Eggsy and Roxy dance to](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phOW-CZJWT0)
> 
> (3) I picked Winchester College as the boarding school where Harry and Owen met because its motto is "Manners makyth man."
> 
> (4) The crayon names [are real](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Crayola_crayon_colors).
> 
> (5) Harry's namesake poet is [Robert Herrick](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-herrick). Owen's is [Wilfred Edward Salter Owen](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wilfred-owen).
> 
> (6) The poem Harry misquotes and Eggsy correctly quotes is by William Cowper.
> 
> (7) "Why Can't the English?" is [a song from _My Fair Lady_](http://www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/my_fair_lady_soundtrack/why_cant_the_english-lyrics-78102.html)
> 
> (8) Andromache was Hector's wife - she shows up in the _Iliad_ and other classical works. Her name means "fighter of men."
> 
> (9) I liked the idea of Kingsman UK's support staff having code names out of Shakespeare. I thought the French agents might be named for French generals and the French support staff might be named for French philosophers. (Brought to you by an excised subplot in which Harry has regular contact with Diderot.)
> 
> (10) The novel Roxy quoted to Simon is Elizabeth Gaskell's _North and South_ , and the quote is how Hannah Thornton feels about her beloved son, John, who ends up marrying the heroine, Margaret Hale.
> 
> (11) Messalina was a Roman empress (wife of Claudius) who had a reputation for extreme sexual promiscuity.
> 
> (12) Istanbul is [gorgeous](http://innie-darling.dreamwidth.org/376386.html).
> 
> (13) Cambridge's Laboratory has a [long history](http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/history/) and has an image of [Babbage's engine](http://www.computerhistory.org/babbage/engines/).
> 
> (14) _Brat Farrar_ by Josephine Tey is one of the greatest mystery novels written in English.
> 
> (15) Apparently, Jesus was often painted with his eyes going in two different directions (not crossed, but moving apart) so that he would not look like he was looking at any particular viewer of the painting.
> 
> (16) I only discovered on my last trip to England that [punts have names](http://innie-darling.dreamwidth.org/443832.html).
> 
> (17) Eggsy's reactions only make sense if you know that the pronunciation of "Anjali" is UN-juh-lee and of "Amrit" is UM-rith.
> 
> (18) [Samuel Morse's _Gallery of the Louvre_](https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/AssetsExhibitions/morse/morse-630px.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/exhibitions/morse&h=429&w=630&tbnid=0VmS-R0V35-AKM:&tbnh=160&tbnw=235&usg=__r1ySIdKa9Z_oDRDOEe-slhSrKyw=&vet=10ahUKEwiHiLa_mqDWAhWM8YMKHeHYDv8Q_B0IhAEwCg..i&docid=0h8x9mQAHomYYM&itg=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiHiLa_mqDWAhWM8YMKHeHYDv8Q_B0IhAEwCg) \- look, you can see the _Mona Lisa_!
> 
> (19) The Seeley Historical Library is the history library of Cambridge.
> 
> (20) The Wieliczka Salt Mine in Krakow is [as awesome as Eggsy made it sound](http://innie-darling.dreamwidth.org/452082.html). All the gifts Eggsy buys are actually available in their [souvenir shop](https://www.wieliczka-saltmine.com/e-shop/s/souvenirs).
> 
> (21) The name "Smashy Smashy Eggman" is from _The World's End_ , the last in the Cornetto Trilogy of films by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. They are absolutely hilarious.
> 
> (22) Roxie Hart is the lead character in the musical _Chicago_.
> 
> (23) I know, I know, it sounds like I made it up just for the Colin Firth connection, but apparently one of the big natural-history publishers really is called Pemberley.
> 
> (24) A [banded orange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dryadula_phaetusa#/media/File:Dryadula-phaetusa-butterfly.jpg) butterfly and a [buckeye](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junonia_coenia#/media/File:Greenville_County_Junonia_coenia_01.jpg) butterfly, so you have some idea what Daisy and Eggsy are wearing.
> 
> Ack! I forgot one! The "Your man's a bit of a bastard, isn't he?" line came straight out of the film _Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy_ , which was of course graced by Colin Firth and Mark Strong.


End file.
